Nine of Montana’s 11 regular season football games will now be available to watch nationwide via live stream on ESPN+ as part of the Big Sky Conference’s new partnership with the “worldwide leader in sports,” the league announced Thursday.
New this year, Montana’s media rights partner Grizzly Sports Properties will make UM’s two non-conference games available to watch on ESPN+ and GoGriz.com/watch as well, and the Big Sky’s broadcast partner ROOT Sports will also extend its four conference broadcasts to ESPN+.
With the Grizzlies’ season opener at Washington available to watch nationwide on the Pac-12 Network and stream via Pac-12.com, and UM’s game at Eastern Washington available on ESPNU and the WatchESPN App, all 11 of Montana’s games will now have a streaming option. A linear TV broadcast of UM’s game at Northern Colorado is yet to be determined.
Earlier in August, the Big Sky announced that Cowles Montana Media, which owns ABC and Fox stations across the state and SWX stations in Montana and Spokane, would be broadcasting six Griz games (two non-conference and four Big Sky) to audiences statewide. Those broadcasts will also have a streaming option available within the borders of Montana via the Watch SWX App. Exact channel listings for those broadcasts (ABC Montana versus Fox Montana or SWX) will be announced in the near future.
ESPN+ is an over-the-top subscription video streaming service owned partnership with ESPN Inc. and the Walt Disney Company that carries 14.9 million subscribers as of July 2021. ESPN+ is an add-on to ESPN’s core linear networks. Thus, some of ESPN’s sports rights are not carried on ESPN+. ESPN+ is available at a cost of $6.99 a month, or $69.99 per year. ESPN+ can also be bundled with Disney+ and Hulu for $13.99 per month.
The Cowles broadcasting company owns channels markets from central Washington to eastern Montana. Beginning with KHQ-TV in Spokane, Cowles stations now provide ABC and Fox coverage in the Tri-cities, Spokane, Missoula, Helena, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls markets, as well as KULR (NBC) in Billings.
ROOT Sports is operated by AT&T Sports Networks, which operates regional sports networks in the Northwest, Pittsburgh, Rocky Mountain, and Southwest regions. The four networks combined reach across 22 states and own exclusive rights to produce and distribute live events from more than 25 teams and conferences.
ESPNU is a digital cable and satellite sports television channel owned by ESPN Inc. The channel is primarily dedicated to coverage of college athletics and is also used as an additional outlet for general ESPN programming. As of September 2018, ESPNU is available to approximately 62.7 million pay television households (68% of households with cable TV) in the United States.
Montana opens the fall season on Sept. 4 at Washington before returning home to face Western Illinois on Sept. 11 in Missoula.
Season ticket packages, as well as home and away single game tickets are on sale now at GrizTix.com.
Montana 2021 Football Broadcast/Streaming Schedule
