Finding which channel or streaming service your favorite sports team (or sport) is on can often be a frustrating endeavor.
For example, is today’s Mets game on SNY, ESPN, Channel 11, or Apple TV +?
Wednesday, ESPN launched a “Where to Watch” feature on its app and ESPN.com that will include thousands of games and sports and how to watch them, whether that’s on broadcast, cable, or streaming.
“50% of our fans have told us they can’t figure out where to see their favorite teams play,” Brian Marshall, Vice President, Sports Product & Technology, Disney Entertainment & ESPN, told reporters at ESPN’s media day at its Bristol, Conn. campus. “So that led to our thoughts for this project. How can we help our fans out?”
Fans can search for events and customize the guide to prioritize their favorite teams and leagues, making it fast and easy to discover what they care about most, all tied to their ESPN profile and personalization preferences.
“Now, let’s be honest, scrolling through hundreds and hundreds of events and the time-based guide can be a little overwhelming and take a lot of time,” Marshall said. “So just on ESPN, on a fall Saturday, we have 200 concurrent events happening. So we created a few filters to try to make that experience easier for our fans.”
The filters allow fans to search by teams, leagues, and sports. For ESPN’s own channels, and those that ESPN has a partnership with, which currently include NESN and Monumental Sport, a link to view is included. If the user has a pay TV subscription, filtering through that carrier is offered. There is also a search function to search by term.
“Where to Watch” currently supports NFL, NCAA Football, Men’s and Women’s NCAA Basketball, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, UFC, F1, NASCAR, PGA TOUR, tennis majors, MLS, Premier League, Champions League, and other live sporting event airing on ESPN platforms, with other sports expected to be added over time.
At the core of “Where to Watch” is an event database created and managed by the ESPN Stats and Information Group (SIG), which aggregates ESPN and partner data feeds along with originally sourced information and programming details from more than 250 media sources, including television networks and streaming platforms.
[ESPN]
About Daniel Kaplan
Daniel Kaplan has been covering the business of sports for more than two decades. A proud founding reporter of SportsBusiness Journal, he spent the last four years at The Athletic.