Liberty’s bowl game opportunities will greatly expand during the next bowl cycle with Liberty and ESPN Events entering a new secondary bowl game agreement.
During the 2020 to 2025 bowl game cycle, ESPN Events could place the Flames in one of at least six bowl games: Boca Raton Bowl (FAU Stadium; Boca Raton, Fla.), Camellia Bowl (Cramton Bowl; Montgomery, Ala.), , Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (Albertsons Stadium; Boise, Idaho), Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl (Toyota Stadium; Frisco, Texas), Myrtle Beach Bowl (Brooks Stadium; Conway, S.C.) and New Mexico Bowl (Dreamstyle Stadium; Albuquerque, N.M.).
“Liberty enjoys a strong and vibrant partnership with ESPN Events that has been furthered by a six-year bowl participation agreement beginning next season,” said Director of Athletics Ian McCaw. “This agreement provides a wide array of attractive bowl opportunities in exciting destinations for future Liberty football teams and Flames Nation.”
The secondary bowl agreement extends Liberty’s long-standing working relationship with ESPN. ESPN has an exclusive, multi-year agreement to broadcast Liberty’s home football games.
Through its ASUN Conference broadcast agreement with ESPN, all of Liberty’s conference events (home and away) are now carried on ESPN+. Liberty also has agreements, which provide field hockey, ice hockey and other Club Sports events for airing on ESPN+.
The partnership between Liberty and ESPN has always involved live sports productions. Over the past two years, Liberty has produced more than 250 live sporting events for ESPN+, highlighted by the football broadcasts.
The bowl game agreement is Liberty Athletics’ second for its football program since announcing plans to move up to the FBS level on Feb. 16, 2017.
Last year, Liberty Athletics announced an individual secondary bowl agreement with the AutoNation Cure Bowl for the 2018 and 2019 seasons.
In the event either conference affiliated with the previously mentioned bowl games does not have enough deserving teams, defined as meeting the six qualifying win threshold, the secondary bowl agreement allows ESPN Events and its bowl game partners to place a bowl eligible Liberty team.
With an enrollment figure over 100,000 students, including 15,000 residential students, and 250,000 current alumni hailing from all 50 states and over 80 countries around the world, Liberty provides these seven bowl games with a fan base that is prepared to travel the country and see the Flames football program play in their first-ever FBS bowl game.
Liberty Athletics recently completed the two-year FBS reclassification process and enters the 2019 season as the 130th fully bowl eligible FBS team in the country.
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Chris Graham
