More MVC Hoops on ESPN Networks

Editor: The following is part of a press release from mvc-sports.com.

(St. Louis, MO) – The Missouri Valley Conference will have an exclusive 31-game men’s basketball schedule on ESPN networks during the 2023-24 academic year.

The Valley — in its final year of a 10-year agreement with ESPN — will clear productions on ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN+, the leading sports streaming service.

Additional regular-season men’s basketball games produced by MVC institutions will be delivered exclusively through The Valley on ESPN — the league’s co-branded digital network with ESPN available through the ESPN App.

Men’s basketball coverage begins in November, as Northern Iowa will compete in the Battle 4 Atlantis — a neutral-site event airing on ESPN networks.

UNI will meet North Carolina in an ESPN first round contest on Nov. 22 with a possible second match-up against Villanova or Texas Tech on Nov. 23 on either ESPN or ESPN2.  The Panthers final game will be on Nov. 24 against either Michigan, Memphis, Arkansas or Stanford.

In terms of MVC regular-season tilts, the league will have five games on ESPN2 and a total of five contests on ESPNU.

The one pre-determined national linear contest will occur on Sunday, Jan. 21, when 2023 CBI participant Indiana State visits Murray State at CFSB Center in Murray, Kentucky.

The Valley has also selected an 18-game, regular-season digital exclusive men’s basketball package for distribution on ESPN+.

Postseason coverage from the 2024 State Farm MVC Men’s Basketball Tournament — known uniquely as Arch Madness — in St. Louis includes four opening-round games on March 7 and four quarterfinal contests on March 8.

Those telecasts are distributed on linear platforms Bally Sports Midwest-Indiana-Kansas City-South-Southeast and NBC Sports Chicago plus live digitally on ESPN+ within the league’s six-state footprint of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee for the first time.

The Arch Madness semifinals on March 9 and the title game on March 10 will be shown on CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports, respectively, as part of a sublicense agreement between ESPN and CBS Sports.

CBS Sports has carried the championship game of Arch Madness every year since 2006 after ESPN or ESPN2 had served as television home for the title tilt from 1991 to 2005.

In 2020, the Missouri Valley joined the Big East (New York City) as the only Division I athletics conferences to conduct their men’s basketball tournaments in the same city for 30 or more consecutive years.