What's next for the Longhorn Network?
When Texas moves to the Southeastern Conference on July 1, it’ll mark the end of the Longhorn Network as a channel that’s part of a package from a cable or streaming provider.
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“Kudos to Chris Plonsky and Deloss Dodds, who did an amazing job of giving us the opportunity to have the Longhorn Network,” Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte said Tuesday. “Our partners at LHN, they were awesome. Gosh, they did an amazing job of covering our sports.”
But what’s next for the network now that the Longhorns are joining the SEC, which also has close ties with ESPN in the form of the SEC Network? Del Conte laid out some of the preliminary plans on Tuesday as part of his athletics town hall.
“One of the things we looked at when we were (looking) into the Southeastern Conference is we have to fold LHN into the SEC Network,” Del Conte said. “At the same time, we own our catalog from the last 13, 14 years of everything that’s been on the Longhorn Network.”
Texas has played its final football and men’s basketball game on the Longhorn Network with women’s basketball, softball, baseball, and other sports still with contests remaining on the channel. As Del Conte mentioned, the rights to any game that has been played on the network belong to the University of Texas.
Once the Longhorns fulfill their obligations with ESPN, the athletic department has plans on what’s next for the Longhorn Network come July 1.
“Drew (Martin) and his team have come up with an amazing idea of trying to figure out if putting that on a like a Netflix, or on a box-to-box – haven’t quite figured out all those technical terms,” Del Conte said. “Basically, we’re going to create a Longhorn Network on – from my words – I’m just going to say a YouTube channel. We’re going to show programs around games. We’re still going to do a lot of the things that we’re going to do. We’re also going to have all our great moments that were on Longhorn Network be a part of that. That’ll be rolling out in early June. Really excited about this. Excited to partner with them.”
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Del Conte would continue, saying “when you start to see what the possibilities are, it’s going to be incredible. We’re just in the early stages of rolling this out. Keep an eye out for that. We’re going to keep the name Longhorn Network. We’re going to move forward with that. As you know, currently as it is today, it’s going to be rolling over into the Southeastern Conference Network July 1.”
