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ESPN Plus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| ESPN Plus | |
 |
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| Country |  United States |
|---|---|
| Availability | Regional |
| Owner | The Walt Disney Company (80%) Hearst Corporation (20%) |
| Key people | George Bodenheimer, President, ESPN, Inc. |
ESPN Plus is the popular name of ESPN Regional Television, which is an American television program syndicator. ERT is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Until its purchase by ESPN, this sports package's syndicator was known as Creative Sports.
ESPN Plus produces and syndicates the following telecasts:
- Big East Conference football and basketball
- Big 12 Conference basketball
- Mid American Conference football
- Sun Belt Conference football
- University of Oregon football and basketball (select games) (under the name Oregon Sports Network)
ESPN Plus also carried Conference USA, Mountain West Conference and Big Ten Conference football and basketball games at one point, but no longer does. Broadcast rights to Conference USA football and basketball games not selected by ESPN are owned by College Sports TV. Broadcast rights to Mountain West Conference football and basketball games are owned by CSTV and are carried by Versus, CSTV and MountainWest Sports Network. In August 2007, broadcast rights to Big Ten Conference games were transferred to the Big Ten Network, a joint venture between the conference and Fox Cable Networks.
Games air on broadcast stations, cable/satellite networks, and on ESPN GamePlan and ESPN FullCourt, both of which are pay-per-view packages. Beginning with the 2007-08 college football season, these games are made available at no additional charge to viewers of the ESPN360 broadband service.
ERT shares its facilities with those of ESPNU. Mike Gleason hosts pregame, halftime, and postgame shows on the ESPN Plus telecasts. ERT also airs Studio 66, named for Big 12 sponsor Phillips 66, as the pregame show before the basketball telecasts. During the conference tournament, it travels to the tournament site.
In addition to the syndicated telecasts, ERT promotes a number of special events:
- It organizes the following college football bowl games, which are televised on either ESPN or ESPN2: Papajohns.com Bowl, New Mexico Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl, Armed Forces Bowl, Hawaii Bowl, and GMAC Bowl. Most of these games are held before Christmas and until 2006 were branded under the name "Bowl Road Trip," while ESPN telecasts after Christmas were referred to as "Capital One Bowl Week." (As of the 2007 bowl season, however, Bowl Week now covers all games shown on ESPN, ESPN2, or ABC.) It also organizes the MEAC-SWAC Challenge, a regular season game between teams representing two of the conferences in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision.
- It is also behind a number of college basketball events, including the BracketBusters mid-season event, Old Spice Classic held at Disney's Wide World of Sports in Florida, the All-College Basketball Classic in Oklahoma City, the Puerto Rico Tipoff, and the new Big East-SEC Challenge that began in December 2007. All games are shown on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU.
- In golf, ERT produces the telecast of the Skins Game and organizes the National Golf Challenge, an amateur tournament.
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