Taking SportsCenter on the road isn’t a new concept for ESPN; they’ve done so for unquestionably big events such as the NFL Draft, the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight and the NBA Finals in recent months. This summer, though, they’re going to be hosting SportsCenter at the site of some much more unusual events on five consecutive weekends, events ranging from the Spokane (WA) Hoopfest 3-on-3 basketball tournament to “The World Championships of Cornhole X” in Nashville, Tennessee to the WNBA All-Star Game in Uncasville, Connecticut to the Nathan’s International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island. Each road trip will have SportsCenter anchors hosting the show from sets on site, and they’ll feature segments with guests and reports on the local events in addition to the regular sports news and highlights. Here’s a breakdown of each SportsCenter stop (all times Eastern):
Sunday, June 28: Spokane, Washington, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on ESPN with Matt Barrie and Jaymee Sire. Site of the Hoopfest, “the world’s largest 3-on-3 street basketball tournament.”
Saturday, July 4: Coney Island, New York, New York, 9 a.m. to noon on ESPN2. Site of the Nathan’s International Hot Dog Eating Contest, which will be airing on ESPN2 immediately afterwards.
Saturday, July 11: Knoxville, Tennessee, 9 a.m. to noon on ESPN2 with Barrie and Sara Walsh. Site of the “World Championships of Cornhole X,” put on by the American Cornhole Association. Yes, that’s a real organization.
Saturday, July 18: Topeka, Kansas, 9 a.m. to noon on ESPN2 with Barrie and Walsh. Site of The National Horseshoe Pitchers Association World Tournament.
Saturday, July 25: Saratoga Springs, New York and Uncasville, Connecticut. This two-site SportsCenter will have Barrie at the WNBA All-Star Game in Connecticut and Walsh at the Saratoga Race Course for the first Saturday of “a 40-day meet generally regarded as the best stretch of thoroughbred racing in the country.”
It’s notable to see ESPN not just going on the road, but heading to a lot of events that wouldn’t normally receive much mainstream sports media coverage. Yes, the hot dog contest always draws at least ESPN attention, but the rest of these? Not so much. They’re also covering a lot of different geographical areas here. The approach of splitting these shows between local event coverage and regular sports news seems logical; it wouldn’t make sense to spend time and money going out to these things and not do features on them, but lots of sports fans will still be tuning in for their regular news and highlights. However, this could be tricky to balance; if something big happens in the traditional sports world, it’s easy to see fans being annoyed that ESPN’s taking time away from discussing it to talk about thoroughbred racing or hot dogs.
This seems like a further attempt to reinforce the SportsCenter brand and get people thinking about the show. With that brand becoming increasingly important for ESPN, this might pay off. The summer’s a good time to do this, too, as there’s usually much less sports news to cover, which should open up space for unconventional strategies like this. It’s going to be interesting to see if investing in these road trips pays off for ESPN; will the novelty help draw in more viewers? Or do their SportsCenter viewers just care about the typical news and highlights, not features on cornhole or horseshoes?
Comments are closed.