SNY VP: Future of UConn-SNY relationship unclear under new AAC deal

Gary Morgenstern, SNY's senior vice president of programming, said Monday he doesn't know if the New York-based network will be able to continue a relationship with UConn that includes televising Huskies' basketball games and a wide range of related content.

The American Athletic Conference this week is expected to formally announce a 12-year agreement with ESPN, details of which were recently leaked to Sports Business Journal. SBJ reported that ESPN's agreement with the AAC calls for many basketball and football games to be streamed on its subscription service, ESPN+.

“Frankly, we've been hearing probably as you've been hearing,” Morgenstern said at Harbor Yard Arenea, where network reps gathered for the announcement of an annual hockey tournament involved all four Conneccticut Division one teams. “We don't know too much about it. We've been contacted by ESPN simply to say, ‘There's a contract and we're going to go through it and understand all the components of that.' But we frankly don't know what it means for us.”

SNY has been the home of UConn women's basketball for seven years. The network airs more than 300 hours of UConn athletics content every year and brings in over $1 million, and priceless exposure, to UConn.

“It's such a great relationship,” Morgenstern said. “I think it's been really good for the university and we know it's been really good for SNY. And it would be a shame if it we weren't able to continue. We just don't know. We're just sitting on the sidelines waiting on the call to really understand what the next step would be. Clearly, if we're left out of that, that's not good for the fans. That's what we strive to do, is put a service out there that satisfies what the fans want. But we just don't know how it's going to play out.”

UConn and the AAC have declined comment in advance of the formal announcement. ESPN holds the rights to all games and could use UConn events as a centerpiece to drive subscriptions for its growing ESPN-plus service ($5 a month), which has about $2 million subscribers. SNY reaches about 12 million homes. Having UConn games on a subscription streaming service could greatly diminish visibility and access.

The new AAC-ESPN deal will run 2020-2032 and pay UConn approximately $7 million annual, about $5 million more than the current deal.