MVC’s Gray Media Schedule Announced

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

18 Men’s Games on Gray Media TV Stations

(St. Louis, MO) – The Missouri Valley Conference will distribute a men’s and women’s basketball telecast package on Gray Media-owned and non-Gray syndicated over-the-air stations in 2024-25.

The Missouri Valley Conference, with Indianapolis-based Tupelo Honey serving as its production company, has worked in conjunction with Gray Media.

(Listen to our interview with Tupelo Honey’s John Servizzi)

Gray Media and the Conference signed a multi-year clearance agreement in September 2024, with 22 Gray Media affiliate stations located within the Conference’s six-state footprint of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.

The Valley on ESPN — the league’s co-branded digital platform via the ESPN app — will also distribute the productions nationally on ESPN+.

The league telecast schedule tips off with three pre-Christmas men’s basketball productions, as Murray State plays host to Evansville (December 3), Illinois State travels to Belmont (December 4) and Indiana State entertains Murray State (December 18).

The 18-game regular-season men’s basketball package includes six Wednesday night double-headers with the first occurring on New Year’s Night (Jan. 1) with 2024-25 MVC men’s basketball preseason favorite Bradley traveling to Indiana State and Belmont visiting Northern Iowa.

Some markets will air a Game-of-the-Week format, which may not include both games of a twinbill.

The January double-headers also include Southern Illinois at Missouri State and Illinois State at two-time defending MVC men’s basketball tournament champion and NCAA Tournament participant Drake on January 15.

Three are also three double-headers in February.

Stand-alone productions occur on January 8 and 22, and February 19.

The league will also produce and distribute three regular-season women’s basketball games — UIC at Drake (January 2), UNI at Belmont (February 13) and Missouri State at Murray State (February 27).

The linear three women’s basketball productions mark the second-straight year the Conference has produced and distributed multiple league contests on either regional cable or over-the-air television platforms.

The 2025 State Farm MVC Men’s Basketball Championship — the league’s 35th-consecutive event in St. Louis — on March 6-9 will feature 11 games with the first eight contests being shown on Gray Media-owned and non-Gray syndicated over-the-air stations.

All four opening-round games on March 6 and the four quarterfinal tilts on March 7 will air on these stations and ESPN+ nationally and throughout the league’s six-state footprint of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.

In January 2024, the Conference announced a contract extension with Enterprise Center — site of the event since 1995 — that could keep the tournament in St. Louis through 2030.

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

GRAY MEDIA
Gray Media, or Gray, is a multimedia company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, formally known as Gray Television, Inc. The company is the nation’s largest owner of top-rated local television stations and digital assets serving 113 television markets that collectively reach approximately 36 percent of U.S. television households.

The company also owns Gray Digital Media, a full-service digital agency offering national and local clients digital marketing strategies with the most advanced digital products and services. Gray’s additional media properties include video production companies Raycom Sports, Tupelo Media Group, and PowerNation Studios, and studio production facilities Assembly Atlanta and Third Rail Studios. Gray owns a majority interest in Swirl Films.