The BIG EAST announced a new six-year digital rights agreement with ESPN on July 8, bringing Seton Hall sports to ESPN+.
“The easiest place to find Seton Hall games on ESPN+ is to download the ESPN app, select ‘Watch’ and then search the schedule for Seton Hall,” said Thomas Chen, senior associate athletics director for external relations. “We are currently airing nearly every soccer, volleyball, women’s basketball, baseball, and softball home event on the network.”
The partnership includes a minimum of 75 Big East women’s basketball games and 25 non-conference men’s basketball games streaming annually beginning in the 2025-26 academic season. In addition, 200 Olympic sports events will stream on the platform.
With ESPN+ being the No. 1 sports streaming platform, there is a new level of visibility for SHU athletics, according to Bob Ley, a SHU alumnus and ESPN’s longest-tenured anchor after 40 years with the network.
“It's hard for me to be objective here, as a Pirate and an ESPN lifer, and one who was there, with fellow Pirate Dick Vitale, through the formative years of the BIG EAST,” said Ley, who is also the founder of SHU’s Center for Sports Media. “The ESPN platform is a powerful one, and their new app opens a world of possibilities and access. This is very positive.”
The BIG EAST and ESPN have a long history, with ESPN having the rights to the BIG EAST from 1980 to 2013. After this, “a realigned BIG EAST membership formed a partnership with FOX,” Chen said, before the Big East inked a deal with FloSports beginning during the 2020-21 women's basketball season. That partnership expanded in the 2021-22 academic year to include Olympic sports and original content through the BIG EAST Digital Network (BEDN) on the FloSports platform.
Now, with the switch from FloSports to ESPN, Chen said that Athletics has gotten positive feedback that their games are “more accessible to fans.”
Niamh Campbell, on-air talent and a senior member of the production crew at Pirate Sports Network, spoke about how this accessibility differs from their past broadcasts.
“If I were to tell people to go and watch the game, we weren’t getting that stuff, because no one was going to pay for an extra subscription,” said Campbell, a junior visual and sound media major with a concentration in sports media. “A lot of people already have ESPN. So it’s just, like, ‘Oh, your game’s on ESPN+? Yeah, sure, I'll put it on.’...It’s going to make Seton Hall Athletics so much more popular.”
The biggest difference between streaming on FloSports and ESPN is that the ESPN graphics package is more robust and the process for transmission check-in is different, according to Chen.
“This was a welcome move for Seton Hall and the Big East as it brings our student-athletes and their games to a wider audience associated with one of the top brands in sports broadcasting,” said Bryan Felt, director of athletics. “We’re excited to be partners with ESPN and thankful to our Pirate Sports Network students who are helping deliver our product to ESPN+ while gaining real-world, hands-on experience in broadcast production."
Joe Morales, current member of PSN and last year’s co-director of broadcasting, echoed Felt’s sentiment, saying there’s a new appeal to the connection with ESPN—something that benefits his fellow PSN students and spectators alike.
“Just being under the ESPN brand is awesome; our audiences are a bit bigger and we love that,” said Morales, a senior visual and sound media major with a concentration in sports media. “Regardless of what company we broadcast for, PSN is a great avenue to learn and put on a live sports production—being able to say we do it for ESPN is fantastic.”
Jacqueline Litowinsky is the copy editor and X Sports Manager for The Setonian. She can be reached at jacqueline.litowinsky@student.shu.edu.
