Kansas basketball officials announced Friday morning that this weekend’s exhibition game against Missouri — 3 p.m. Sunday at Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., — will in fact be televised after all.
The cost for the telecast of the online stream of the event will be $40 and fans can sign up online at showdownforrelief.com. To expedite the expected rush, fans are encouraged to subscribe as soon as possible. As with the tickets to the game, all revenue derived from the telecast will go to aid the victims of the recent natural disasters in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Veteran Kansas City broadcaster Leif Lisec will do play-by-play, while nationally known ESPN broadcasters Fran Fraschilla and Holly Rowe will serve as the color analyst and sideline reporter. All three will donate their time and talent to the cause.
Initially pegged as a radio-only game because of both sides’ desire to sell out the arena in an effort to raise as much money as possible for hurricane relief, officials from both schools began looking into the idea of televising the game once the event sold out earlier this week.
“Our first objective was to sell out Sprint Center,” the two schools said jointly in a release. “Once we achieved the sellout so quickly, our fans who could not get tickets expressed tremendous interest in having the game televised. We wanted to make sure that the charities we’ve identified would be the only entities to derive revenue from this game. SIDEARM Sports has provided the platform to allow us to create a second stream of revenue via this telecast.”
According to a press release, SIDEARM Sports, the official website provider for both schools’ athletics departments, has arranged the platform for the telecast and is waiving all fees to ensure that all revenue raised is directed to relief efforts. Money raised from the game will be contributed to the organizations that the five living former U.S. Presidents have come together to support: the Houston Harvey Relief Fund, the Rebuild Texas Fund, the Florida Disaster Fund, Juntos y Unidos Por Puerto Rico and the Fund for the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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