- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 1,171,279
- Reaction score
- 59
You must be registered for see images attach
Credit: ESPN
ESPN is covering the World Cup with the same fervor it would for any other major global sporting event, despite draconian restrictions levied by FIFA on broadcasters that do not own the rights to air the tournament.
One glance at a press release issued by ESPN prior to the World Cup would suggest the network is sufficiently dedicated to covering the event. But even all of those coverage plans weren’t enough to satisfy the apparently lofty expectations of anonymous Fox executives, who griped to Front Office Sports earlier this week that ESPN wasn’t covering a “historic performance” put on by the U.S. Men’s National Team in their opener against Paraguay. “Where in the hell was ESPN?” an anonymous source asked.
Perhaps those Fox executives, none of whom were directly quoted, weren’t paying very much attention.
ESPN has aired daily editions of its soccer franchise, ESPN FC, each morning before World Cup action begins and at night after the last game concludes. The network has sent more than a dozen on-site reporters to matches across its linear and digital properties and has effectively made the Spanish-language ESPN Deportes a wall-to-wall World Cup network. Not to mention, ESPN produced a handful of original series entirely for the World Cup.
All of this for a property ESPN has no broadcast rights to.
Let’s put aside the obvious double standard at play here for a second. (Fox, among the major sports networks, is probably the least qualified to raise this exact objection.)
There are well-documented restrictions on how non-rights holders can use World Cup highlights, limiting the match footage ESPN can use in its coverage. Despite those stringent limits, ESPN has made itself a destination for soccer fans seeking World Cup coverage.
“Our sole focus is providing fans with the most comprehensive coverage of sports across platforms daily,” Mike Foss, Executive Vice President, Executive Editor, Sports News and Entertainment at ESPN, told Awful Announcing. “While World Cup footage that can be utilized by non-rights holders (as is the case in the U.S.) is severely limited, ESPN is delivering world-class analysis, journalism, and context in spite of those restrictions.”
A copy of those restrictions, obtained by Awful Announcing, details how the use of World Cup match highlights is severely limited for a network like ESPN. Highlights must only appear on daily “multi-sport news programs airing a minimum of five days per week.” Additionally, highlights cannot be shown until after Fox’s post-game coverage concludes for the day. In the case of Tuesday night’s matches, that meant ESPN couldn’t begin showing highlights until after Fox went off the air at close to 3 a.m. ET Wednesday morning.
Even after all those restrictions are met, ESPN can use at most two minutes of highlights per show from all of the previous day’s matches. When there are four matches, that amounts to just 30 seconds of highlights per match at most. Then, after 24 hours, ESPN can no longer use highlights from those matches at all. So if the network wanted to, say, preview the upcoming USMNT match against Australia, it couldn’t use highlights from the Paraguay game.
Late-night SportsCenter host Scott Van Pelt expressed his annoyance with the restrictions on social media prior to his Tuesday show. His workaround? Having Apple TV MLS analyst Taylor Twellman illustrate the goals himself.
Reporter Jeremy Schaap called the critiques from the Fox executives “odd,” given the strict guidelines.
Even with the onerous restrictions, to suggest ESPN isn’t doing its fair share of World Cup coverage is borderline preposterous. Shows like Get Up and First Take have dedicated numerous segments to the tournament during times when the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final — both properties that ESPN aired on its own networks — were reaching their climaxes.
During Wednesday’s A-block of the 7 a.m. ET SportsCenter, ESPN took full advantage of the slim highlight rights it does have and showed Lionel Messi’s hat trick during Argentina’s opener against Algeria on Tuesday night, followed by an on-the-ground report from the USMNT camp as it prepares for Australia on Friday. Get Up followed and seemed to maximize their highlights usage as well.
Even ESPN’s 1 a.m. ET SportsCenter stuck around an extra two hours on Wednesday morning waiting for Fox to go off the air so they could re-record the first segment of the show with highlights. That way, the overnight re-airs of the show would have highlights included at the earliest possible moment.
Of course, there’s a deep irony in the fact that it is Fox, of all networks, levying these allegations. Fox is notorious for covering only the sports it broadcasts itself, while paying little attention to sports airing on other networks. Watch one episode of Big Noon Kickoff and count how many segments are dedicated to SEC teams. Or check out the Fox Sports website’s coverage of the Winter Olympics (it’s all syndication and wire copy).
If Fox executives did, in fact, have gripes about ESPN’s World Cup coverage, they probably wouldn’t appreciate it if the mirror were turned around on them.
Fox declined to respond to a request for comment on this story.
The post ESPN responds to Fox World Cup coverage beef, touts ‘comprehensive coverage’ despite rights restrictions appeared first on Awful Announcing.
Continue reading...
