May 14, 2004
Columbia, Mo. - University of Missouri audio broadcasts for the sports of football and men's and women's basketball in 2004-05 will be available to Tiger fans online for a nominal monthly fee, as announced today by the Department of Athletics. Mizzou is teaming with Yahoo! Sports (http://sports.yahoo.com) to deliver real-time audio broadcasts throughout the 2004-05 school year.
The broadcasts, available on www.mutigers.com and Yahoo! Sports, will be offered next season for the very affordable price of $4.95 per month. Fans can also access the entire season of broadcasts for a reduced rate of $29.95 for the year, spanning from July 1 to June 30 each year.
The Yahoo! Sports audio offerings are available for both broadband and dial-up users, and enable fans to listen to the radio broadcast of their official school radio station. As a result, alumni that live thousands of miles from their alma mater will be able to follow every game as if they were back on campus and listening to their hometown announcers. This year, Yahoo! Sports will be providing fans with higher-quality audio streaming and more content from participating schools.
All available post-season broadcasts will be included, in addition to all regular-season contests for each of the sports. The move to a pay service is a growing trend in athletics, and has been implemented to help the department recoup the costs of providing such a service to fans. The department had previously absorbed the cost for the service through the 2003-04 season.
Beginning in May, Tiger fans will be able to sign up for the broadcast service through mutigers.com. A link will be provided on the front page of the site.
All of the schools that are making audio content available via Yahoo! Sports College Broadcast in 2004-05 - including Mizzou - will offer the following subscription packages:
1. School Pass Subscription - users can access all broadcasts for Mizzou on a monthly or annual basis. For example, users can pay $4.95 per month or $29.95 per year to gain access to all streamed sports broadcasts for only Mizzou.
2. College Pack Subscription - each school will be integrated into and offered as part of the College Pack subscription for $9.95/month or $59.95/year. This package allows users to access all college broadcasts for ALL schools
In addition to Mizzou, many other major colleges and universities will be featured in Yahoo! Sports College Pack. While the exact list of schools to be included in the service in 2004 is still to be determined, below is a list of schools that were available on the service in 2003:
* Arizona State
* Duke
* Alabama
* Kansas
* Indiana
* North Carolina State
* Oklahoma
* Oregon State
* Purdue
* Pittsburgh
* Iowa
* Virginia Tech
* Washington State
The content for both subscription packages will go live in May and be accessible to users via www.mutigers.com or http://sports.yahoo.com.
At the current time, online broadcasts for the sports of baseball, softball, volleyball and soccer will remain free of charge for the 2004-05 season.