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 n ...

offering

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games to viewers throughout the

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. GamePlan began on

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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,

Raycom Sports Raycom Sports is a Charlotte, North Carolina–based producer of sports television programs owned by Gray Media. It was founded in 1979 by husband and wife, Rick and Dee Ray. In the 1980s, Raycom Sports established a prominent joint venture wi ...

and SportsWest, and some local stations like

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WFMZ-TV WFMZ-TV (channel 69) is an independent television station in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. Locally-based Maranatha Broadcasting Company owns both WFMZ-TV and Wilmington, Delaware–licensed MeTV affiliate WDPN-TV. The two stations sh ...

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

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provider or on the

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service. Eventually, with carriage of

moving from computers only to

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s, tablets and

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s 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, to make way for ESPN College Extra, which offered 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. The following year,

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

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 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 The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, the ACC's eighteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athlet ...

and

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central United States, South Central and Southeastern United States. Its 16 members in ...

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, among others) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Fa ...

games that left ESPN Plus for the new

Big Ten Network Big Ten Network (BTN) is an American sports network based in Chicago, Illinois. The channel is dedicated to coverage of College athletics, collegiate sports sanctioned by the Big Ten Conference, including live and recorded event telecasts, news ...

Pricing

References

{{ESPN College Football

External links

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

External links