UC Berkeley has opened a dedicated Twitch streaming studio for its athletes, with ten hours of shows a week and four more schools lined up next.
UC Berkeley has opened the first on-campus Twitch studio for college athletes. It's run by StreamU, a college sports streaming network from TheLinkU and Twitch, and Cal's athletes already have about 10 hours of weekly shows on the schedule.
The studio has multi-camera gear, professional lights, a PlayStation 5 lounge and a portable camera kit for streaming around campus. Planned shows include workouts, gaming, cooking contests, campus tours and game-day coverage, all on Cal's StreamU channel.
Those four schools are expected to get their own studios in the coming weeks, so expect a lot more college sports content on Twitch this season.
Twitch is moving onto the college campus. UC Berkeley has opened a full streaming studio where its athletes can go live on Twitch, and they already have about 10 hours of shows planned every week.
The studio is the first from StreamU, a college sports streaming network run by TheLinkU in partnership with Twitch. For the athletes, it’s a shot at building a fan base and earning money from their name, image and likeness, known as NIL, the rules that let college players get paid for endorsements and content. For Twitch, it’s a new pipeline of creators with built-in fans.
The Cal space is set up like a small TV control room. It has Canon and Sony cameras, professional lights and audio, and a Blackmagic Design switcher, the box that lets a producer cut between several cameras live.
There’s also a PlayStation 5 gaming lounge for gaming streams. For anything outside the studio walls, athletes can grab a portable Sony FX3 camera paired with a LiveU encoder, a device that sends live video over mobile networks, so they can stream from around campus.
The build was handled by UnlimitedIRL, StreamU’s technology partner, and the room carries Cal branding. Athletes from every varsity sport can use it.
The weekly schedule mixes sports and everyday life. Planned shows include:
Everything runs on the school’s StreamU channel on Twitch, so fans can follow along in one place instead of hunting down individual players.
Cal athletic director Ron Rivera, a former NFL head coach who also serves as the football program’s general manager, framed the studio as a way to help athletes tell their own stories and grow their NIL value. StreamU’s chief revenue officer, Landon Goesling, put it more bluntly, saying college athletes are content creators and the right tools can open up new ways for them to earn.
There’s a recruiting angle, too. Big-time programs already compete with new stadiums and locker rooms. A studio that teaches players to run a live show could catch the eye of a high school star who’s thinking about life after sports.
That path is already real. Diego Pavia, the Vanderbilt quarterback who won several national awards in 2025, went undrafted by the NFL and is now building a career as a streamer.
For viewers, it means more college sports content on Twitch that isn’t the game itself. Think locker-room style hangouts, gaming nights with players and behind-the-scenes coverage on game days.
For athletes, the money side is handled by TheLinkU, founded in 2022 by Austin Elrod, which manages contracts, payments and reporting for the network. That matters, because NIL deals can get complicated fast for students juggling classes and training.
Taylor Webb, chief of operations at UnlimitedIRL, said the Cal design is the template the company plans to bring to every StreamU campus.
Cal won’t be alone for long. Over the next few weeks, StreamU expects to add studios at Baylor, Houston, Texas A&M and Arkansas, all built on the same model. If you follow any of those teams, keep an eye on their StreamU channels on Twitch.
On Cal’s StreamU channel on Twitch, which carries the studio’s weekly programming.
It’s a college athletics live streaming network run by TheLinkU in partnership with Twitch.
Yes. All Cal varsity athletes can go live from the studio.
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