ESPN GamePlan was an

out-of-market sports package In North America, an out-of-market sports package is a form of subscription television that broadcasts sporting events to areas where the events were unable to be seen by viewers on other broadcast and cable television networks due to the games no ...

offering college football games to viewers throughout the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. GamePlan began on Labor Day weekend, and continued through the first Saturday in December. It included all regional telecasts on ABC, as well as games from various syndicators like

ESPN Plus ESPN+ is an American over-the-top subscription video streaming service available in the United States, owned by Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, in partnership with ESPN Inc., which is a joint venture between The Walt Disney Com ...

, Raycom Sports and SportsWest, and some local stations like Allentown, Pennsylvania's

WFMZ-TV WFMZ-TV (channel 69) is an independent television station in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Locally-based Maranatha Broadcasting Company owns the station and Wilmington, Delaware–licensed MeTV affiliate WDPN-TV. Both stations share studios on Eas ...

which broadcast locally-produced college football games. Viewers could watch games from their

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satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioi ...

provider or on the ESPN3

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

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service. Eventually, with carriage of ESPN3 moving from computers only to

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s, tablets and digital media players allowing access without any additional fees, GamePlan became a superfluous package, with only the few providers who refused to offer ESPN3 or where ESPN3 access was limited (for instance, rural areas) really able to compel viewers to use the service. On August 28, 2015, the package was discontinued, along with

ESPN Full Court ESPN Full Court was an out-of-market sports package in the United States that carried college basketball games. The package consisted of about 150 games annually, from the season tipoff in November to the first two rounds of the NCAA Women's Divis ...

, to make way for

ESPN College Extra ESPN College Extra is an American multinational out-of-market sports package owned by ESPN, Inc. It was launched on September 5, 2015, as a merger of the existing ESPN Full Court and ESPN GamePlan, each of which offered college basketball and coll ...

, which will offer a select bundle of games that would previously have been broadcast by GamePlan and Full Court.

History

In 1992, Showtime Event Television supplemented ABC's airing of regional college football telecasts by creating "Option Play." This allowed viewers to watch games not airing on their local ABC station via pay-per-view. The original cost for a single game was $8.95 (with each additional game costing $1 extra), with the full "season-ticket" package priced between $49.95 and $69.95."ABC, ESPN team to tackle college football on PPV", https://variety.com/1993/tv/news/abc-espn-team-to-tackle-college-football-on-ppv-105575/ The following year,

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

took over for Showtime and offered the purchase of up to three individual Saturday afternoon blocks for $8.95, as opposed to only a single game. In 1993, the package was renamed "Season Ticket", followed in 1994 by "ABC College Football on ESPN Pay-Per-View." In 1996, the name was again changed to "ESPN GamePlan", as the formation of

ESPN Regional Television ESPN Events is an American multinational sporting event promoter owned by ESPN Inc. It is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, and shares its operations with SEC Network and formerly with ESPNU. The corporation organizes sporting events f ...

allowed for additional out-of-market games from conferences such as the Big Ten and MAC to be broadcast. ESPN would also pick up telecasts from other conferences such as the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Conference-USA, Mountain West, Pac-10, SEC and WAC for inclusion in GamePlan.

Schedule

Up to 15 games were provided each week. Some games were joined in progress due to time and channel constraints. In 2007, ESPN GamePlan picked up additional telecasts of the Atlantic Coast Conference and

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities o ...

shown on Comcast Sports Southeast/Charter Sports Southeast. This change replaced

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

games that left ESPN Plus for the new Big Ten Network.

Pricing

References

{{ESPN College Football ESPN ABC Sports College football on television Out-of-market sports packages Defunct television networks in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1992 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2015

History

Schedule

Pricing

See also

References