Fox takes over Las Vegas basketball tournament but won’t air or stream preliminary games

Earlier this year, Sports Business Journal reported that Fox Sports was taking ownership of two Las Vegas college basketball tournaments, the Las Vegas Invitational that is held on Thanksgiving Weekend and the Las Vegas Classic which runs on Christmas week. It’s a move that has been successful for ESPN, buying and/or creating bowl games and holiday college basketball tournaments thus producing content for its networks. Tournaments like the Diamond Head Classic, Wooden Legacy, Jimmy V Classic and others all fall under the umbrella of ESPN Events which manages everything under the sun from ticket sales, promotion, scheduling, etc.

All of the games from the ESPN bowls and tournaments are televised or at least streamed so fans of the participating teams can watch them. You would think that also would be the case for the Las Vegas tournaments, but not so. For the Las Vegas Classic which starts today at the Orleans Arena, just two of the eight games will be aired on FS1. That means six games will go without a live internet stream nor a television platform and in this day and age, that is almost unforgivable.

Here is the slate of games for the tournament:

Yes, there is local radio for each of the participating schools, but for those who wanted to watch the games today and the first two tomorrow, fans are out of luck. That goes especially for fans of the Colorado Buffaloes who have gotten used to their games being televised on the Pac-12 Network. They were hoping to see the Buffaloes play Penn State, but Ryan Koenigsberg who writes for BSNDenver.com caught wind of the situation and got a statement from the Pac-12 about the non-televised situation.

You would think Fox would at least use Fox Sports Go or even utilize FS2 which could desperately use the content or its Fox Sports Net regional networks for the first day of the tournament, but apparently not. It’s a lesson for Fox Sports which has to know when you buy a tournament, you’re expected to bring the games to the fans in some type of platform.