In the past, we’ve seen a lot of moves from ESPN to work music into their live sports broadcasts, from the Monday Night Football halftime show to concerts during events to anniversaries to marketing campaigns. What they’re doing for this year’s College Football Playoff national championship (No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 3 Georgia) halftime on Jan. 10 is interesting, though. Instead of showing off a live concert, ESPN will be hosting the global premiere of the “When I’m Gone” music video from Alesso and Katy Perry. Here’s a teaser for that:
The song in question is already out, and has a lyric video up on Alesso’s YouTube page, but it’s interesting that they’re choosing the ESPN CFP championship halftime as the debut for the music video. There’s certainly going to be a good audience there, and that will probably help the video get some attention. However, there are also going to be a lot of people watching for the sport who don’t really care about Alesso or Perry.
Of course, ESPN has used halftimes for plenty of promotional things in the past, from those aforementioned MNF concerts to trailer releases for Disney-owned films (including Star Wars: The Last Jedi. And while not all of those have appealed to the audience watching for the games (a factor in the end of the MNF concerts), there’s clearly been some larger promotional value here for the network. We’ll see if that continues with this Alesso/Perry video release.
