On Thursday, the America East (AE) and ESPN announced an agreement that will lead to the broadcasting of more than 3,000 AE events on ESPN platforms over an 11-year period. The agreement means that beginning this season, every men’s and women’s basketball game hosted by an AE team will be broadcast on ESPN3, an online streaming service owned by the network. The games streamed online will be branded as “The AE on ESPN3.”

ESPN3 is available to college students for free as long as they are connected to on-campus Wi-Fi networks.

“America East’s three-decade relationship with ESPN has been an invaluable asset in telling our story to a national audience and we are thrilled to be able to continue that relationship while taking it to new heights,” said Amy Huchthausen, the commissioner of the AE Conference, in a statement.

The deal is an extension of an existing agreement and will run through the 2026-27 academic year. It requires all nine AE schools to develop their own in-house production operations. According to the statement, each member institution will work with both ESPN and the conference to build the infrastructure required to broadcast games.

“This new initiative with ESPN is going to elevate each institution, but more importantly the conference, ahead of many of our peers,” said Marty Scarano, the director of athletics at the University of New Hampshire and chairperson of the Athletic Directors Council for America East and the chair of Colonial Athletic Association Football. “This, on many of our campuses, is a cutting-edge advantage and puts us in a completely different place altogether institutionally. The benefits will be reaped not only by athletic departments, but across campus as well.”

The AE men’s basketball championship game has aired on either ESPN or ESPN2 for the past 29 years. In the agreement, ESPN retained the rights to broadcast the game in the future. Other AE basketball games will also be broadcast nationally by the network. In the past, only select basketball games were broadcast on ESPN3.

Basketball, however, will not be the only AE sport that will benefit from the agreement. Conference championship games from other sports will also be televised on the ESPN network.

“It’s incredibly exciting to know that the America East Conference will grow alongside ESPN with ‘The AE on ESPN3’ content which ensures our institutions will reap maximum exposure opportunities for years to come for both live and featured content,” Huchthausen said in the statement.

Tim Heiman will become the ESPN3 play-by-play announcer for all of BU men’s and women’s basketball home games. Heiman was previously the women’s basketball play-by-play announcer. He also currently serves as the director of broadcasting and media relations for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. Doug Walsh and Chelsea Loscalzo will join Heiman as color commentators for men’s and women’s games, respectively.

The BU basketball teams are set to start their season in a doubleheader on Friday. The women’s team is scheduled to play Bucknell at 5:30 p.m., and the men’s team is scheduled to tip off against Cornell at 7:30 p.m. from the Events Center in Vestal, New York.