College basketball season is a week away, and at James Madison that means opening up the luxurious new 8,500-seat Atlantic Union Bank Center with a men’s and women’s doubleheader.

But one of the biggest questions for Dukes hoops fans is how they can watch their team play after a fall devoid of JMU sports?

Total attendance for game officials and the like, at least at these early-season games, is capped at 250 after Virginia governor Ralph Northam handed down new COVID-19-related restrictions earlier this month. JMU is slated to host six men’s and women’s games at the AUBC between Nov. 25-30 now that the JMU women have added a home game against Buffalo to its schedule for the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Tickets aren’t available to the general public and JMU is still in talks with regional sports networks but hasn’t finalized any deal for local television broadcasts, leaving paying for a streaming service the only current option for many JMU diehards desperate to see the games.

“We are anticipating that the majority of our games are going to be on FloSports, via our relationship with Flo and the contract we have with them,” Colonial Athletic Association commissioner Joe D’Antonio said. “Part of our agreement with FloSports does allow for our institutions to have local linear opportunities to a certain extent. Those opportunities are still very much available to our member institutions.”

Kevin Warner, JMU’s assistant athletic director for communications, told the Daily News-Record that the Dukes have been in talks with MASN and NBC Sports Washington in hopes of broadcasting three men’s and three women’s basketball games on their networks in area markets.

But with schedules still up in the air for Washington’s professional sports franchises, those networks have yet to commit.

“We have initiated dialogue with MASN and NBCSW,” Warner said via text message. “But we still have to wait for NBA, NHL and MLB to line up first before we can solidify.”

The JMU men are scheduled to play rival George Mason on Dec. 12 at the Siegel Center in Richmond. According to Warner, VCU controls the streaming and broadcast rights to that event inside its own arena and JMU has not been told whether that game will be available to viewers. Similarly, Norfolk State and Radford play at the Atlantic Union Bank Center on Nov. 28 as part of a multi-team event hosted by the Dukes, a game that will not be streamed by JMU.

Unlike past seasons where at least some JMU home games have been available on the school’s in-house MadiZone streaming platform, all Dukes home games this season, as well as in-conference away games, are available online exclusively with a FloSports subscription, where plans start at $12.49 per month.

The reason for the exclusivity stems from the coronavirus bringing an early end to college sports last spring and a shutdown of CAA competition into the fall. Prior to the 2019-20 school year, the conference voted 9-1, with JMU the dissenting vote, to sell its media rights to FloSports. The deal netted the league $4.5 million in exchange for access to 300 CAA athletic events.

The college sports shutdown made it impossible for the CAA to provide the minimum number of games to FloSports over the past year, meaning the burgeoning streaming provider controls the rights to all men’s and women’s basketball contests for the 2020-21 season.

The CAA also has a deal with CBS Sports Network to broadcast a select number of basketball games, but the number of leagues with schedules in flux has also limited the opportunity for the CAA to finalize any schedule with the national cable channel.

“The contract we have with CBS Sports Network does remain in play,” D’Antonio said. “Certainly the fact that we have amended in a significant way the days of the week we are playing our games, the windows of availability that CBS has to broadcast our games is a factor. But as CBS continues to organize and understand what their schedule is going to look like for basketball season, we are continuing to work very closely with them to determine whether or not there might be opportunities.”