Michael Lev's introduction on ESPN+ for Arizona and Big 12 fans

If you've ever seen the inside of a TV production truck, it looks something like this. That's the idea.

This is where the magic happens. In this room (the broadcast control room) and the one next to it (the video wall control room), about 25 people enabled the University of Arizona to produce its first streaming broadcast on ESPN+ – last Friday's volleyball game between Arizona and Boise State.

“Given the amount of work that has been done behind the scenes, this project that started 6 to 9 months ago, and the fact that it is coming to fruition and going as well as we hoped, we felt like we did our best,” said John Daley, Arizona's deputy athletic director for creative services.

The UA will produce 50 events for ESPN+ this academic year, and that number will “more than double” starting next year, Daley said.

The Wildcats' football game against Northern Arizona on Saturday will be broadcast on ESPN+, although Daley and his team will not produce that game. Most likely, a handful of UA football games will “air” on ESPN+ each season going forward. The same goes for many men's basketball games. And ESPN+ will be the primary platform for the UA women's basketball team, among other sports.

This is a big change for Arizona and the three other “Four Corners” schools — ASU, Colorado and Utah — that joined the Big 12 Conference this summer. For fans — and even the so-called experts in the media — it can be difficult and confusing to navigate this change. We all just want to watch the game and not spend much, if any, time trying to figure out how to do it.

What follows is a hopefully helpful guide to all things ESPN+, including how to get it, what the UA had to do to get up to speed, and what the broadcast landscape for Arizona's “non-profit” sports will look like going forward.

What is ESPN+ and why are Arizona's sporting events broadcast on this platform? ESPN+ is ESPN's subscription streaming service. Its offerings include live sporting events, original programming, on-demand programming and “premium” content on ESPN.com.

Since 2012, Arizona football or basketball games that were not on “linear television” were broadcast on the Pac-12 Networks, which also televised numerous events in the non-profit or “Olympic” sports.

That relationship ended in June, when the last Pac-12 sporting event was played – the baseball tournament in Scottsdale. The Big 12 does not have its own network, but is one of about 30 conferences whose games are broadcast on ESPN+.

The Big 12's media deal is with ESPN and FOX. Most UA football and men's basketball games are broadcast on those networks or their affiliates, such as ESPN2 or FS1. The Big 12's six-year contract extension with ESPN and FOX begins in 2025 and will pay each school about $31.7 million annually.

From a consumer perspective, one of the main benefits of switching from Pac-12 Networks to ESPN+ is that anyone can get it. It doesn't matter what cable or satellite package you have. It doesn't matter if you canceled cable. It doesn't matter where you live in the U.S.

ESPN+ can be purchased as a standalone product for $10.99 per month. It is also available as a bundle with Disney+ and Hulu for $14.99 per month with ads or $24.99 without ads. (The latter – no ads – only applies to Disney+ and Hulu.)

You can access ESPN+ through the ESPN app, which is available on numerous streaming devices like Roku or Amazon's Fire TV Stick. If you have one of those devices hooked up to your flatscreen TV — or own a “smart TV” — you can watch Saturday's football game as usual.

I asked Daley, a longtime UA employee and alumnus, what he tells his friends when they ask him that question.

“Honestly, a lot of people have ESPN+ and don’t even know it,” Daley said.

He suggested using the voice command button on your remote and saying “ESPN+.” This should take you to the app, where you can sign up for the service.

Unfortunately, that's the reality. But compared to many other content packages, you get a lot for your money here.

The ESPN+ subscription gives you access to all the games broadcast on the platform, and that's not limited to college sports. ESPN+ also broadcasts live MLB and NHL games, PGA tournaments, UCF fights, and professional soccer games. You can watch these events on any of your devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop) and stream “most ESPN+ content” on up to five devices simultaneously, according to ESPN+'s online support page.

Daley and his team – including IT gurus Jeff Kohler and Ryan Bloom – started talking about it last summer when rumors began swirling about Arizona moving to the Big 12.

The broadcast control room was already in place, but needed to be upgraded and updated. Its primary purpose had previously been to produce content for the video boards at Arizona Stadium and McKale Center. Now the UA needed to produce that content as well as volleyball and basketball games.

“The physical parts of the room haven't really changed,” Daley said. “It's the brains, all the equipment.”

These “brains” are located between the broadcast control room and the video board control room. In TV parlance, this room is called the “rack room.” The black “racks” resemble computer towers. Stacked in a long row, about six feet high, with countless buttons and cables, the racks look like something you would see in mission control.

Construction and installation could not begin until late May, after UA's graduation ceremony at Arizona Stadium (where the video board will be used). A planned power outage shut down the McKale Center for a week in July, which shortened the schedule. The original goal was to be up and running by Aug. 14. The first unofficial event to run through the new video board control room was the “Destination Arizona” orientation for new students on Aug. 24 at the McKale Center.

“It was just two wireless cameras,” Daley noted. And the campus provided all the content.

The first volleyball game was a much bigger undertaking. Every ESPN+ broadcast must meet ESPN's standards. In most cases, that means announcers, multiple cameras, replays and graphics packages.

“It's very important that the broadcasts on ESPN+ meet ESPN's minimum requirements,” said Justin Nusser, senior director of media programming and production for the Big 12. “Because these are all national broadcasts, we want to make sure they are as close to linear productions as possible.”

Although Saturday's football game will be broadcast on ESPN+, ESPN is handling production and will have a truck on site.

A UA spokesman declined to provide a specific figure, but said it was more than $1 million and “well under” the $8 million Louisville spent in 2018 to build an 80,000-square-foot broadcast center (ahead of the ACC Network's launch in 2019).

The average cost to build a modern control room is about $2.5 million, said Major Howe, who works for UCF as assistant athletic director for production. Howe previously worked as a remote director for ESPN and has more than 20 years of experience in television production.

Neither ESPN nor the Big 12 provide financial support beyond the $31.7 million in licensing fees, so the costs are borne by the member schools. Some purchases, such as equipment, are “upfront” or “one-time” (at least until something breaks or becomes obsolete). Others, such as the production team and commentators, are ongoing. (Steve Quis and Makenna Martin commentated on the first volleyball game.)

For schools, the benefits are threefold: (1) ESPN+ gives institutions and their brands more exposure; (2) it provides a platform to tell the stories of their students and athletes; and (3) producing games in-house gives aspiring directors and camera operators real-world experience. (One of Howe's students, who graduated in May, landed a freelance job at ESPN and was part of the production team for the UA-New Mexico game last week.)

Another potential benefit is renting out the control room to a network like ESPN or FOX for a men's basketball game, for example. This wouldn't come close to recouping all of the costs, but it's something.

“That's the ultimate goal,” said Daley. “The vehicle should be equivalent to a (production) truck.”

Starting next school year, the UA will be required to produce all home games in football, volleyball, men's and women's basketball, gymnastics, baseball and softball that are not selected by one of the Big 12's media partners. In other words, almost all of them.

The UA doesn't currently have the infrastructure to produce broadcasts of off-campus events, as it did for the volleyball game against Boise State. Until it does, baseball and softball streams may be limited to single-camera setups with no replays. But they will still fall under the ESPN+ umbrella.

Arizona streamed 148 events “for free” in 2023-24. Those days are over.