With just a few weeks before the 2022 college football season kicks off, ESPN has announced it has a new anthem for its coverage throughout the season, announcing that British artist Yungblud will provide this year’s musical backdrop with his single “The Emporer.”
The song will be used throughout ESPN‘s college football coverage this season, appearing in college football programming, promotion, and games across the ESPN family of networks.
ESPN announced the news on Friday afternoon with a teaser trailer for the upcoming season set to the Yungblud song.
“In previous years we’ve selected music that matched the tone of college football. This year, with ‘The Emperor,’ it feels like a custom built song for college football from Yungblud,” ESPN senior director of sports marketing Curtis Friends said in a release. “The chants, hype, and tone match perfectly to what we expect to feel around and inside college football this season.”
While “The Emperor” has actually been written for about seven years, Yungblud said he’s been waiting for the best time to release it, and this partnership felt like the perfect opportunity.
“It’s a massive honor to have my song ‘The Emperor’ chosen as the anthem for ESPN’s college football season. I wrote this song when I was 17; it was just an outburst of unfiltered energy that I knew would have its moment one day,” Yungblud said. “ I played it live for years, but never found the right time to release it until now. College football is such a massive part of American culture, and all I ever want to do is bring energy to people, so I can’t wait for the song to bring that energy to the fans and the players at the games all season.”
This isn’t the first time ESPN has partnered with an artist to create an anthem for its college football programming. Previously, the network has worked with Imagine Dragons, Juice WRLD, and Thirty Seconds To Mars to provide a musical backdrop for its coverage.
ESPN’s college football coverage is set to begin on August 27 and will culminate with the College Football Playoff in January.
[ESPN]
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