Duke coach Jon Scheyer is finding new and inventive ways to uplift college basketball’s nonconference schedule — and getting paid a lot of money while doing so.
The school announced Thursday that it will play three high-profile non-league games at neutral sites for the 2026-27 season, with a groundbreaking twist. Amazon Prime Video will broadcast the games. This marks the first time that the streaming service, which already carries NFL and NBA rights, will step into the college basketball world.
Amazon will carry these three games next season:
Nov. 25: Duke vs. Connecticut in Las Vegas (T-Mobile Arena)Dec. 21: Duke vs. Michigan in New York (Madison Square Garden)Feb. 20: Duke vs. Gonzaga in Detroit (Little Caesars Arena)
Duke, UConn, Michigan and Gonzaga are all poised to be preseason top-10 teams, making the matchups among the most notable in college hoops heading into next fall.
Beyond the compelling nature of the non-con games, the business arrangement is also unprecedented. The Duke/Amazon partnership is a multiyear agreement and the NIL opportunities for Duke will be huge — in the millions annually — sources told CBS Sports. In fact, other event organizers had been pursuing Duke for significant nonconference games, sources said, but none of those could match the payouts that will come with Prime Video’s package. There is also the advantage of being able to independently control the teams. Because of that, Scheyer aggressively pursued the innovative deal for months. He has been among the most prominent tone-setters in ambitious nonconference scheduling since he took over the program in 2022.
All of the deals haven’t been finalized and signed, but sources said Duke’s opponents will make north of $500,000 for playing in the games. (Duke, as the organizer and Prime Video’s partner, will make much more.)
On the broadcast side, Duke is a member of the ACC, which has a long-term television rights deal with ESPN. The workaround Duke managed was to play non-ACC games in cities (Las Vegas, New York, Detroit) where the ACC does not have automatic/default broadcast rights because it does not have member schools in those areas.
Duke pushing forward with such an endeavor did come with a compromise, though: ESPN has negotiated future Duke nonconference games later this decade.
“In partnership with the ACC’s primary media partner, ESPN, and in exchange for the flexibility to participate in this Prime Video series of nonconference games, Duke has committed to participate in select additional ESPN owned and operated men’s basketball neutral-site events across the 2027-28 and 2028-29 seasons,” Duke said in its press release. “Exact details will be announced at a later date.”
The tip times for the three games are to be determined. The Gonzaga tilt in Detroit was intentional: That city is the site of next season’s men’s Final Four, marking the first time Detroit will host college basketball’s grand event since 2009. The game against Michigan is not only a battle against the reigning national champs, but it’s also a rematch of February’s major non-con battle in Washington, D.C. that Duke won 73-72.
The Connecticut game is particularly compelling. The two schools were engaged for the better part of a year on scheduling each other, sources told CBS Sports, and Scheyer opted to keep moving forward with the game even after his team blew a 19-point lead in the Elite Eight and lost in crushing fashion in the final second after Cayden Boozer’s turnover led to Braylon Mullins’ game-winning 3. Both those players will be back at their respective schools next season, making the Duke-UConn matchup one of the premier tilts of the first two months of the season.
