CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The America East Conference unveiled its 2014-15 basketball television package for ESPN on Thursday, featuring more regular-season games on ESPN networks than ever before, the entire women’s championship and the men’s semifinals and title game.ESPN platforms will be the conference’s exclusive home for basketball action for the fourth-straight year in 2014-15 and will carry 25 regular-season games, the most in conference history. Additionally, every game of the 2015 America East Women’s Basketball Championship will air on ESPN networks, including the championship game on ESPNU for the second-straight year, while the semifinals of the Men’s Basketball Playoffs will be carried on ESPN3 and the championship game will continue to air on ESPN2.“Men’s and women’s basketball are our premier sports and we are pleased to continue offer our fans dozens of opportunities to watch America East games again this season,” said America East Commissioner Amy Huchthausen. “This package gives basketball fans around the country more exposure to America East basketball as well as the conference and its mission as a whole.”Some of the highlights of the 2014-15 schedule include:
- Thirty-five basketball games between America East teams (70 total appearances) will be shown on ESPN platforms this season.
- Every school will appear on ESPN3 at least twice during the regular season as part of the package.
- Every team will appear on ESPN3 at least once during the regular season as part of the package.
- Twenty-five America East regular-season basketball games (16 men, 9 women) will be shown on ESPN platforms this season, the most in conference history.
- ESPNU will televise the Albany and Hartford men’s contest on Friday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. from SEFCU Arena. It will be the eighth straight year ESPNU has televised an America East regular-season contest.
- The entire America East Women’s Basketball Championship will be carried on ESPN platforms.
- Quarter and semifinal action on March 7-8 will be shown on ESPN3.
- For the second-straight year, the women’s championship game will air on ESPNU from the site of the highest remaining seed on Friday, March 13 at 4:30 p.m.
- The semifinals of the Men’s Basketball Playoffs will be carried on ESPN3 on Sunday, March 8.
- The 2015 America East men’s basketball champion will be crowned on Saturday, March 14 at 11 a.m. That game will air on ESPN2, the 28th straight year, the league’s title game has appeared on either ESPN or ESPN2.
- America East will produce four wild card games (2 men, 2 women) featuring the league’s most intriguing matchups towards the end of the regular season.
- The men’s games will be Wednesday, Feb. 25 and Saturday, Feb. 28, the final day of the regular season while the women’s contests are Thursday, Feb. 26 and Sunday, March 1, the final day of their regular season.
For the first time, Ross Video’s mobile production unit, Ross Mobile Productions (Ross MP), will serve as the packager and producer for all of America East’s ESPN3 games this year. America East and Ross announced a two-year partnership in April.ESPN3 is ESPN’s live multi-screen sports network, a destination that delivers thousands of global sports events annually. It is available at no additional cost to fans who receive their high-speed Internet connection or video subscription from an affiliated service provider.“Fans are watching more programming on mobile devices than ever before and our partnership with ESPN gives viewers several platform options on which to watch our games,” said Huchthausen. “ESPN’s wide reach also provides us with an expansive audience to expose, not only our basketball teams, players and coaches, but also our elite institutions and student-athletes and their stories.”ESPN3 is currently available in more than 85 million homes online at WatchESPN.com, on smartphones and tablets via the award-winning WatchESPN app, through ESPN and Xbox LIVE to Gold members and on Apple TV and Roku. It is also accessible at no cost to approximately 21 million U.S. college students and U.S.-based military personnel via computers, smartphones and tablets connected to on-campus educational (.edu) and on-base military (.mil) broadband and W-Fi networks. Major cable providers within the America East footprint that provide ESPN3 access are Burlington Telecom, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, RCN, Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS TV. The network is also available at no cost to approximately 21 million U.S. college students and U.S.-based military personnel via computers connected to on-campus educational networks and on-base military networks. In recent years, America East has been at the forefront of the changing digital landscape within college athletics. One of the first conferences to fully embrace ESPN3 and its reach and capability, the conference has aired games exclusively on ESPN networks, with the majority of those contests on ESPN3, since 2011. In August 2013, the conference launched AmericaEast.TV, the league’s digital network, which features free live and on-demand video content from each of the member institutions’ campuses.