Instead of playing in the World’s Most Famous Arena, Duke and Michigan will clash in a baseball park more than a thousand miles away.
The highly anticipated matchup between the Blue Devils and national champion Wolverines is in the process of moving to the Miami Marlins’ loanDepot Park rather than Madison Square Garden, CBS Sports and Front Office Sports have reported.
The game remains scheduled for Dec. 21 with Amazon Prime Video owning the broadcast rights. The contracts to move to Miami have not been signed, according to the reports.
The reported reason for the switch has to do with Duke’s unprecedented agreement with Amazon and how it intersects with a conference’s territorial TV rights.
Fox is the Big Ten’s primary broadcast partner, and it pushed back on Amazon getting Michigan’s game at Madison Square Garden because the arena is part of the conference’s footprint. Teams like Rutgers have played conference games at MSG in recent years, and Illinois faced Duke there in February 2024.
Last year, Michigan and Duke began a series by playing in Washington, D.C., and ESPN (the ACC’s primary partner) got to broadcast the game. The Big Ten expected its partner to be able to broadcast a Duke-Michigan game and was “miffed” when Duke struck a three-game deal with Amazon, Yahoo reported.
Moving the game to Miami takes it out of Big Ten country, but rather than head to a standard basketball arena, Michigan coach Dusty May reached out to Marlins owner Bruce Sherman, according to CBS Sports. May built a friendship with Sherman while he was coaching Florida Atlantic, whom he took on a Cinderella run to the Final Four in 2023.
Sherman approached May with the idea of holding an FAU game at loanDepot Park and now gets a Duke-Michigan showdown instead.
The retractable-roof arena has not held a basketball game before, but it isn’t unheard of for a Major League Baseball venue to do so. Wisconsin and Stanford played a men’s game and the Wisconsin and Kansas State women’s teams faced off at Milwaukee’s American Family Field in 2022. Also, the University of San Diego and San Diego State played at Petco Park in 2015.
Also, the NHL brought loanDepot Park out of its comfort zone when it held the Winter Classic there on Jan. 2 of this year.
