It’s a new NBA season, and that means new scorebugs are being rolled out by their TV partners. Why does everyone feel the need to change their scorebug for every sport each year? Who knows. Maybe they feel like we’ll notice if they keep the same scorebug from the year before and complain or something. At least it gives us something to talk about, so for our own personal reasons, it’s not that bad.
Anyway, ESPN unveiled their new scorebug for NBA broadcasts and, well, it’s a scorebug alright. Those who have bad eyesight might love the big numbers and letters dominating the rest of the graphic, but for those who have 20/20 vision or can just wear glasses when looking at their screen, the score numbers look way too big.
In some ways, this type of scorebug is a necessity. While it may look goofy for people with larger TVs, more and more people are watching games on their phones. And because of that, it helps those viewers if the numbers are big because they’re only watching on a six inch or so screen.
In the future, networks will need roll out a plan to have two separate scorebugs – one designed for those watching on phones, and one for those watching on TV. Right now, there probably aren’t enough people watching on their phones to necessitate the need to do that, but that would be the ideal situation someday. Once that day comes, we can all complain about two types of scorebugs per broadcast instead of just one.
