Prime Video’s three-pack of Duke men’s basketball games this season now have a broadcast team.
Play-by-play voice Ian Eagle will be joined by analysts Stan Van Gundy and John Wall for the three-game slate of Blue Devils games this season, according to an announcement from Prime Video on Wednesday. The trio are all under contract with Prime Video for NBA coverage and will now pitch in with Amazon’s limited run of college hoops broadcasts. Eagle and Van Gundy, of course, are prominent college basketball commentators during March Madness on CBS and TNT, with Eagle serving as the lead play-by-play voice for the tournament. Kayla Grey, who is part of Prime Video’s WNBA coverage, will serve as a sideline reporter for the series.
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The first of the three Duke games will come later this month on Nov. 25, which is “Thanksgiving Eve.” The Blue Devils will play UConn in Las Vegas in a game that competes directly with Netflix’s new NFL window (Packers-Rams from SoFi Stadium).
Game 2 of the series will be against Texas Tech from Madison Square Garden, a game that was originally supposed to be against Michigan until Fox Sports and the Big Ten laid claim to the rights, asserting prior nuanced patterns to how non-conference neutral-site games have been awarded to networks in the past. Ultimately, Michigan was axed in favor of a Big 12 opponent to avoid the brewing headache.
The third game is slated for Feb. 20 against Gonzaga in Detroit, continuing a trend of marquee non-conference matchups for Duke in the middle of conference play.
The agreement marks Prime Video’s first foray into college sports and also signals opportunity for other top-flight schools to earn incremental revenue by scheduling neutral-site games and selling them to a broadcaster that isn’t directly affiliated with their conference. As was seen in the whole dispute over the Michigan game, however, it’s difficult to get a deal like this over the finish line without buy-in from the networks that already own the rights. As part of this deal, Duke has committed to play in certain ESPN-controlled non-conference games in future seasons.
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The quality of the broadcast team Prime Video is putting forth shows that the streamer is certainly invested in making these games feel big. The only question now is whether the series will attract a meaningful audience, or if putting college basketball games on Prime Video will keep the contests out of sight and out of mind for fans.
The post Ian Eagle, Stan Van Gundy, John Wall to call Duke basketball for Prime Video appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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