Facebook’s venture into live sports streaming shows no signs of slowing. As the site has built up its Watch initiative, it has aired Major League Baseball, college football, and Champions League soccer, to name a few. And on Thursday, Facebook announced it will exclusively air 47 college basketball games between now and March.
The broadcasts will be produced by Stadium, a digital sports network created from the merger of Campus Insiders, 120 Sports, and The American Sports Network, which has previously partnered with Facebook.
The 47 games in the Stadium-Facebook agreement are not exactly must-watch events — a lot of Mountain West, West Coast Conference, Conference USA, and Atlantic 10 teams — but the list does include major-conferences schools such as Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Washington State, Wake Forest and Mississippi. Facebook and Stadium will also air three first-round games in the Mountain West Tournament, as well as two quarterfinal matchups in the Conference USA Tournament.
According to Recode, Facebook will pay Stadium for the right to distribute the games.
One of the on-air personalities apparently involved in Stadium’s coverage is Kristen Balboni, who previously worked as one of Fox Sports’ hosts of @TheBuzzer. She tweeted Thursday that she was happy to be part of the venture.
So happy to be a part of this with @WatchStadium and @facebook! https://t.co/qDpPxMODKH
— Kristen Balboni (@KristenBalboni) November 16, 2017
This will be the second major partnership between Facebook and Stadium. In August, the two companies announced they were teaming to produce and distribute 15 college football games featuring teams from Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference. Thirteen of those contests have already aired, while two more are upcoming.
The first game in the new college basketball partnership, Belmont at Middle Tennessee, aired Thursday night. You can find the full list of broadcasts here.
About Alex Putterman
Alex is a writer and editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. He has written for The Atlantic, VICE Sports, MLB.com, SI.com and more. He is a proud alum of Northwestern University and The Daily Northwestern. You can find him on Twitter @AlexPutterman.