All Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference games, including the School of Mines and Black Hills State University, are moving to pay-per-view.
While behind a paywall, leaders say it’s a chance to invest new revenues in other sports.
The Homestake Trophy matchup between Mines and BHSU, one of the oldest college football rivalries in the country, will be broadcast on the RMAC Network beginning this season.
For Western South Dakota’s marquee matchup, BHSU athletics department communications director Alec Schoof said it’s a way to improve systems across RMAC athletic departments.
“As a league we’re doing this to help improve our schools, help improve our broadcasts as a whole," Schoof said. "The revenue is getting distributed back to our universities and we’re putting that revenue towards improving our broadcast systems.”
Schoof said that means no sports will go without play-by-play moving forward.
“We’re taking the revenue and reinvesting it in ourselves," Schoof said. "We’re going out there and making the product better for our sports such as soccer and softball. The sports that aren’t directly on campus, where the press box situations aren’t always necessarily what we’re looking for, but we’re doing everything that we possibly can to make the production the best we possibly can for each and every sport.”
Schoof said fans and family members deserve the best possible quality.
“It’s not like any sport is getting forgot about, it’s not just football and basketball," Schoof said. "We’re going out there, focusing on every single sport we have on campus we’re broadcasting. Making sure the student athlete experience isn’t a low-quality product.”
Events like yearly university media days will be broadcast on the network for free. Local radio broadcasts of games are expected to continue as-is.