In the past two days, Notre Dame football has renewed their deals with their major television and radio broadcast partners. Both home and abroad, the Fighting Irish have extended their contract with their major media friends.
NBC Sports and the Eurosport group have extended their international television rights agreement for exclusive broadcast rights to 2011 and 2012 Notre Dame Football home games across Europe and Asia.
Starting this fall, all Notre Dame Football home games will be broadcast throughout Europe exclusively on Eurosport 2. In addition, Eurosport has the exclusive TV rights in the 15 countries where Eurosport Asia Pacific is distributed.
Additional scheduling highlights include longtime rival Michigan State on September 17; the first primetime game played at Notre Dame Stadium in 21 years against USC on October 22; and a neutral-site game in primetime against Maryland at FedExField in Landover, Maryland.
The NBC Sports Group will air a combined 28 college football games on both NBC and VERSUS this season. As part of the group’s expanded coverage, a new live studio show will air on both NBC and VERSUS that will be hosted by Liam McHugh along with Doug Flutie and Roland Williams. During Notre Dame games, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King and Profootballtalk.com’s Mike Florio will join the crew at halftime.
New features for this season include live in-game tweets from sideline reporter Alex Flanagan and a live in-game chat from Inside the Irish blogger Keith Arnold.
Notre Dame will also have the same radio broadcast home in Chicago for at least another three years.
The University announced Wednesday a three-year extension with WLS-AM 890 for broadcasting football and men’s college basketball games. The deal runs through the 2013-14 men’s basketball season.
The agreement means WLS will carry all Notre Dame football games live, at least 25 Irish men’s basketball games live plus any postseason contests, as well as the one-hour Jack Swarbrick Radio Show that airs Saturday mornings for 30 weeks from September to April.
“The Fighting Irish have become a part of the programming fabric of WLS, joining our other top-ranked, high-powered teams of Don Wade and Roma, and Roe and Roeper,” says Michael Damsky, president and general manager of WLS AM and FM.
“The Fighting Irish represent a marquee name and loyal fan base that transcends college sports,” says Joe Potter, senior vice president for operations at IMG College. “IMG College is proud to partner with Notre Dame athletics and WLS to bring Notre Dame football to all Fighting Irish fans.”
NBC SPORTS’ 2011 NOTRE DAME SCHEDULE
Sep 3 South Florida 3:30 p.m. ET
Sep 17 Michigan State 3:30 p.m. ET
Oct 8 Air Force 3:30 p.m. ET
Oct 22 USC 7:30 p.m. ET
Oct 29 Navy 3:30 p.m. ET
Nov 12 Maryland 7:30 p.m. ET (at FedExField in Landover, MD)
Nov 19 Boston College 4 p.m. ET
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site that generates millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports
He does regular weekly radio spots in Chicago and Cleveland and has appeared on live shows all across the world from Houston to New Zealand. You can follow him on Twitter
