Calling it a visionary partnership that will revolutionize the college sports landscape, the Mountain West Conference, which includes the University of New Mexico, today announced a multi-media relationship with College Sports Television that will begin in the fall of 2006. The key promise of this new partnership is to deliver more games to more people in more homes across more sports than any other conference partnership.
UNM President Louis Caldera, a member of the MWC Board of Directors, said of the new MWC/CSTV partnership, “This is a great deal for our teams, our student athletes, our fans and the university. The increased exposure this partnership will bring to the University of New Mexico will benefit the university in many ways, academically as well as athletically. We are very excited to be the first conference in the nation to move in this direction.”
Caldera says the new arrangement with allow MWC member institutions to regain a measure of control of their assets and bring intercollegiate athletics more in line with the academic mission of the institution. He says the Board placed an emphasis on playing football and basketball games at times that fans prefer, not what is dictated entirely by television.
The agreement will guarantee the MWC at least the same amount of national exposure, via over-the-air network and national cable third parties, that it currently receives under its contract with ESPN. This is over and above a significant number of national exposures on CSTV – up to 24 football and 40 men’s basketball telecasts annually. The promise is also for under-exposed sports and championships to dramatically increase their opportunity for exposure via telecasts and other media.
The new agreement will also provide MWC member institutions with greater revenue to meet the challenge of balancing athletic budgets. UNM Athletic Director Rudy Davalos says more money to the member schools provided by the new partnership “will enable athletics programs to better handle the increasing demands on their budgets. And beyond increased funding, the new partnership will provide MWC schools more opportunities than currently available to secure sponsorships for their programs.”
About The Mountain West ConferenceThe Mountain West Conference is one of the top collegiate conferences in the college sports arena and is compromised of eight Division I-A institutions including, The United States Air Force Academy, Brigham Young University, Colorado State University, University of New Mexico, University of Nevada -- Las Vegas, San Diego State University, University of Utah, University of Wyoming. Beginning July 1, 2005, Texas Christian University will become the ninth member of the MWC.
About College Sports TV
CSTV is comprised of two business units: College Sports TV and CollegeSports.com. College Sports TV televises regular season and championship event coverage from every major collegiate athletic conference, in addition to nine NCAA Championships. The network’s innovative mix of event, studio and documentary programming cover and promote college sports from more perspectives than any other network. CollegeSports.com, the most-trafficked college sports Web site, and its network of nearly 160 official athletic sites are the number one online source for college sports broadband content, news, information, scores and analysis. College Sports TV currently has agreements with distributors that represent more than 52 million homes nationwide, including the top three national distributors: Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable. CSTV was co-founded by President and CEO Brian Bedol, Chairman Steve Greenberg and Executive Vice President Chris Bevilacqua. Bedol and Greenberg co-foundedClassic Sports Network, which they sold to ESPN. It is now ESPN Classic. Bevilacqua is a former senior executive with Nike Inc., where he headed the company’s successful foray into the college market.
Contact: Susan McKinsey (505) 277-1989 Greg Remington (505) 925-5520
Posted by Sumrow at August 26, 2004 04:01 PM