After watching the Loyola University (Illinois) women’s soccer team beat the University of Detroit in the Horizon League Championship game November 5, Loyola Director of Athletics John Planek hopped on the team bus for the 90-mile drive down Interstate 94.

At the same time that the Ramblers women’s soccer team was laying claim to the league title and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, the Loyola men’s soccer team was playing a conference tournament semifinal game back in Chicago against the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

Unable to defy the laws of physics and get to both soccer games at the same time, Planek resorted to technology to keep tabs on the men’s game. Luckily for Planek, staying tuned to games has never been easier for members of the Horizon League.

After streaming men’s and women’s basketball games through CSTV last season, the Horizon League launched its own network on October 24 and created a vehicle for broadcasting league sporting events.

"I didn’t know the score of our men’s game, so I called my house and my two boys were watching the game on the computer at home," Planek said. "They were giving me updates over the phone. My son basically broadcast the last minutes of the game to me as I was coming home from Milwaukee."

The Horizon League streamed 140 men’s and women’s basketball games through CSTV last season, but the creation of its own network on the league Web site allows member schools to broadcast any and all sporting events taking place on their respective campuses.

The league still partners with CSTV but has branded its own product to take full advantage of the initiative.

"All of a sudden, we’re in the television business, and that means we’ve created a network where we can do anything," said Horizon League Commissioner Jon LeCrone. "We can do every soccer game, every volleyball match, every event that our people are willing to go out and set up. We can broadcast every single Horizon League event."

To invest the appropriate resources in broadband technology, LeCrone and the Horizon League bucked popular trends and pulled most league basketball games off traditional television.

After looking at television ratings over a three-year stretch, LeCrone realized that Horizon League games had hardly any viewers, and production of each game was costing an arm and a leg.

"We spent $1.5 million over three years and didn’t know what we were really getting out of having the games on television," LeCrone said. "We were getting a low number of games on because of production costs and when we looked at the analysis, it was so inefficient."

LeCrone knew there had to be a way to broadcast more Horizon League content for fewer dollars. He decided to give broadband technology a try, despite pleas from some colleagues to keep his games on television.

"I shared this idea with a colleague of mine who is also a commissioner and he told me that the day I pulled our product off of broadcast television would be the day I’d get fired," LeCrone said. "I told him I might get fired, but I thought it was the right thing for our league, so we did it."

Already investing $500,000 each year to broadcast men’s and women’s basketball games, LeCrone was still willing to use those dollars to promote the league’s product. The league office took $400,000 and divided it among the nine member schools. The remaining $100,000 went back into the office budget to help get the initiative off the ground.

The league bought each school three production-quality cameras along with other necessary equipment so that the schools would have the means to produce their own basketball games.

"We gave them the cash, the expertise from our office and told them they were required to put all eight of their home men’s and women’s (league games) on television," LeCrone said. "If they can get them on a local affiliate station, that counts, but at the bare minimum, it must be streamed on our Web site."

Instead of having just a couple of games broadcast throughout the season, most teams will now have all of their home games broadcast on the Horizon League Network. Coaches have received the initiative well.

"It’s such a competitive market and it’s been hard to get consistent television coverage," said Sandy Botham, head women’s basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "Now there’s consistency and our supporters can see Horizon League basketball (all the time)."

Botham has already seen a change in recruiting. Freshman Jodie McClain is the team’s first recruit from Ohio. Every other player on the roster is from Wisconsin or Illinois.

"It had definitely helped to be able to go into their homes and tell (families) they can log on at any time to watch a game," Botham said. "Family is so important in women’s basketball and now parents have the ability to watch their daughters play every Horizon League game without driving."

Recruiting has also changed at Loyola. The men’s basketball team has two student-athletes from California, and Planek says their parents tune into the team’s games over the Internet.

While a number of institutions have started streaming their athletics events on their own Web sites, the vast majority charge fans for a subscription to their multimedia package. The Horizon League has set itself apart by providing its content free of charge.

LeCrone says the league is making a concerted effort to reach out to its supporters and build a larger fan base. Such an effort wasn’t possible when only a few games were broadcast on television each year.

"I want them to have the content. I want to build an audience. I want to build fans," LeCrone said. "Our schools have some fans, but I don’t want to put up any barriers, and in today’s world, sometimes 99 cents can be a barrier. Right now we have an unlimited supply of content and I hope we can grow exponentially."

Part of that exponential growth should come as a result of the league’s branding effort, which included launching the Horizon League Network and redesigning its Web site in the same week.

"We didn’t feel like we needed a separate Web site for the network," said Will Roleson, Horizon League associate commissioner for communications and multimedia. "We felt it was important to provide one-stop shopping for all things Horizon. We knew we could put it all on one platform and didn’t want to advertise competing Web sites. The name brand was something we want to build equity in and gain an identity for something we’re doing."

LeCrone calls Roleson the CEO of the Horizon League Network and credits him for the smooth debut of broadband content last season. Of the 140 games broadcast by Horizon League schools, there were only three technical issues that affected a broadcast.

"We watched a lot of games last year for quality control and general interest," Roleson said. "We lost three games and one was due to a power outage that was out of our control."

The goals have certainly changed since the launch of the league’s own network last month.

"Last year we went into it with the goal of simply getting games out, which we accomplished," Roleson said. "We felt good about that, but we needed to market it and promote it more this year. We knew we had a product that worked, we were proud of what it was, and the focus of our effort went into marketing and promoting the product."

Some schools have chosen to take the money provided by the league and invest it professional production of their games; others have decided to turn to students to work the cameras. Either way, schools are taking advantage of the opportunity to share more of their games with a larger audience.

"When I heard of all the technology and the things that had to be done, I was kind of skeptical," Planek said. "We put up new video boards in the gymnasium and have taken what’s put on the Web and put it on the video boards. We’ve been able to integrate all of the technology. It’s pretty amazing."

The focus has turned toward getting more content streamed through the network.

LeCrone wants schools to broadcast everything they can.

"Before we couldn’t afford to spend the money to broadcast a swim meet, but now we can because it costs us nothing. We’ve invested the capital," LeCrone said. "There’s a market for original programming. We’re telling people to come to the network and they’ll find something interesting there."

While power conferences have television networks paying them millions for broadcast rights to their games, LeCrone believes that new technology will allow the smaller conferences to maintain an important place at the table.

"I think this is the way leagues like ours can really flourish. It’s in the new media. Television is the old media for our league," LeCrone said. "This is who we are and we’re OK with doing things differently."