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The Pioneer Football league got a boost when another school partnered with ESPN+ last week.
Written By
Omar-Rashon Borja
Senior Writer, Editor, Historian
Written By
Omar-Rashon Borja
Senior Writer, Editor, Historian
The Pioneer Football League’s media landscape is the most interesting in the FCS because it lacks a media deal. The conference’s members rely on their Olympic sports media partners to air their football games. For example, St. Thomas partners with MidCo Sports+, while most schools in the Pioneer Football League stream their games with ESPN+.
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Another Pioneer Football League school will stream games on ESPN+ thanks to the Big East’s new digital media partnership. The Big East recently signed a deal to shift its digital streaming rights from FloSports to ESPN+. Consequently, Butler Bulldogs home games will also move from FloSports to ESPN+.
FloSports is a reputable streaming service, but it has much less FCS content than ESPN+. ESPN+ streams most FCS conferences, making it a significantly better value than FloSports. This fact hurt Butler. Many casual FCS fans were not paying for another streaming service to watch the CAA or Butler.
The Pioneer Football League now gets five to six more games on ESPN+ with the addition of Butler home games. Most of the league now calls ESPN+ home. Davidson, Dayton, and St. Thomas are now the only PFL teams not to stream home games on ESPN+.
This makes it easier for FCS fans to become more invested in the often-overlooked Pioneer Football League. Now, the PFL has even more games on ESPN+ that FCS fans can stream without adding another streaming service.
The addition of Butler games boosts the relevance of the often-overlooked PFL. Now, most of the PFL’s games are on a streaming service everyone has.
ESPN and the BIG EAST Conference have announced a new digital media rights agreement to stream on ESPN+ beginning in the 2025-26 season. bigeast.com/news/2025/7/8/…
