![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/main\/files\/2012\/11\/ESPN3Slider-300x201.gif\" "\\"ESPN3Slider\\"")
ESPN3 will carry 345 exclusive college basketball games this season, a record for the platform.<\/p><\/div>\n
In this age of second screens, digital platforms, multiple RSNs, and the like, it can seem nearly impossible to meet the needs of fans of not just the marquee sports \u2014 football and basketball \u2014 but many of the Olympic sports as well. Technology has brought the industry to the point where fans are no longer excited to see their team\u2019s games on TV; they expect it.<\/p>\n
Even a powerhouse like ESPN, which has three 24\/7 linear networks \u2014 ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU \u2014 at its disposal (four if you count the Longhorn Network), struggles to find airtime for games it has purchased under rights agreements with various conferences.<\/p>\n
However, the Worldwide Leader thinks it may have the answer.<\/p>\n
ESPN3 is undergoing an evolution. When the online service was born about five years ago, its purpose was to serve as the best available screen for events happening on ESPN networks or, in some cases, to serve as a destination for overflow programming. It wasn\u2019t long until the company began granting additional exposure to the brand by locking up ESPN3-exclusive events. The number of exclusive games continued to increase each year.<\/p>\n
This year, ESPN decided to break apart the previously married pair of ESPN3 and WatchESPN. The latter will serve as the digital destination of content airing on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU. That opens the door for ESPN3 to become a digital portal of exclusive live events, and the company plans to make college sports a cornerstone of that mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the distribution that [ESPN3] now has and the number of events that it has been doing up to date, we truly believe that it has now turned itself into that fourth network in line,\u201d says John Lasker, VP, programming and acquisitions, digital media, at ESPN.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/main\/files\/2012\/11\/cunnigham-bubba.jpg\" "\\"UNC")
“We thought the investment that we could make and the investment that they were willing to make was very beneficial to the both of us.\u201d \u2014 Bubba Cunningham, AD, University of North Carolina.<\/p><\/div>\n
To program the digital platform, ESPN has begun striking content deals with ACC schools for some basketball and third-tier broadcast rights. To date, North Carolina, Clemson, Florida State, and Georgia Tech are on board, with a source at ESPN saying that more announcements are on the way.<\/p>\n
The agreements offer an increased amount of content for fans and obvious recruiting advantages for the schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt this gave us a great opportunity to broadcast some of our Olympic sports that wouldn\u2019t otherwise be broadcast,\u201d says Bubba Cunningham, athletics director at the University of North Carolina. \u201cSo we thought the investment that we could make and the investment that they were willing to make was very beneficial to the both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Investments made on ESPN\u2019s end were to supply partner schools with essential equipment to create an ESPN-caliber broadcast. As a part of the deals, ESPN was looking to raise the bar on broadcasts made available on ESPN3. The goal is one of high-quality uniformity.<\/p>\n
In recent years, ESPN3 or WatchESPN was a destination for many games from third-tier rights produced by outside entities: the schools or conferences or other production companies. The goal now is to make that a thing of the past, holding a game on ESPN3 to the same standards expected of a linear broadcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, we wanted this to look like an ESPN production to the end user,\u201d says Lasker. <\/strong>\u201cThe reality today is, anybody can stream a live event. What we\u2019re trying to do is bring television quality to ESPN3. We want to make sure that, when any of these schools produce a game that, when you turn it on, it\u2019s going to look great. We think we\u2019ve achieved that.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of each agreement, ESPN3, on average, will distribute 35-45 sports events per school, and yet, no ESPN personnel will be on campus when the games are produced.<\/p>\n With a production package from Ross Video that includes both the company\u2019s Carbonite switcher and Xpression graphics engine, ESPN can create a uniform graphics package that will ensure that a Seminoles game being switched by a student in Tallahassee will have the sharp look of an ESPN broadcast.<\/p>\n A-Game Graphics<\/strong> \u201cMost people would think, how in the world is that possible?\u201d says Brian Olson, marketing product manager at Ross Video. \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is using the multilayered playout capability on a single channel of Xpression, combined with switching video and graphics on the frame by custom controls in Carbonite.<\/p>\n ESPN3 and its partner schools will use Ross Video’s Xpression graphics engine to create a uniform look to every broadcast.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cSo the TD is able to control most of this from custom controls on the switcher,\u201d he continues. \u201cFor example, let\u2019s say the TD has a clock and score up and wants to do a media wipe to a replay with a different graphic. He can trigger that, and the media wipe will actually happen on a higher layer than the score bug, and it will obscure the frame for two or three frames at full screen during its transition. During that period, we undercut the graphic with the next graphic, and we also switch the video source. So the effect is, the media wipe is revealing a new camera and a new graphic, but it\u2019s all happening on a single channel of Xpression.\u201d<\/p>\n Two other tech features were appealing to ESPN.<\/p>\n First is Xpression\u2019s Data Link Server, which interfaces with both the scoreboard\/clock (it\u2019s compatible with boards from Daktronics, OES, and White Way) and the stats table. That allows ESPN to keep yet another piece of equipment at home.<\/p>\n Second is Xpression\u2019s Project Server, a central collecting point for Xpression graphics templates. The server lives in Bristol, CT, and allows ESPN engineers to make universal updates to various graphics packages. All the school then has to do is log in to the Project Server and download the latest update of the package.<\/p>\n All pieces combine for a highly cost-effective production model and, most important to both ESPN and its partner schools, still give the look and feel of a game a fan would watch on the television.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that, if it looks like an ESPN broadcast, that has great credibility and professionalism that we think has a lot of value,\u201d says Cunningham, whose university has a centralized control room inside the Dean Smith Center, where all ESPN3 productions, as well as campus-wide videoboard productions are produced.<\/p>\n Bringing the School to ESPN Level<\/strong> \u201cWhat we found was varying degrees of capability, excitement, engagement, and experience,\u201d says Lasker. \u201cThe folks that we\u2019ve targeted in the outset, we did so because they were a little bit more ahead of the curve as far as what they were doing about their own platforms. So we were closer to getting them to the ESPN-level quality that we were expecting.\u201d<\/p>\n The two core technological components that ESPN targets are the switcher and the graphics platform \u2014 which it has covered with Ross Video \u2014 and delivery and connectivity. To remedy the second concern, ESPN partnered with a third-party fiber company, which it did not wish to disclose, to establish direct connectivity from the schools to ESPN.<\/p>\n The result is better content and a whole lot more of it. With these technologies, ESPN3 is expected to stream 345 exclusive college basketball games, a record for the platform. Approximately 50 of those games will be produced through these partnerships.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think we have cracked the code on answering the bell of what fans and our partners are now expecting from media distribution,\u201d says Lasker. \u201cTechnology has put us in a spot where UNC fans are now expecting that their UNC baseball games are going to be available to them somehow. What we\u2019re trying to do here is to make sure that that does happen. It\u2019s a fantastic feat for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" College sports fans are a demanding bunch. Ask any one-loss team in the BCS picture just how unforgiving they can be. In this age of second screens, digital platforms, multiple […]\n More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[376,920,481,932],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen ESPN was experimenting with this idea over the past couple of years, they ran a series of tests in which Ross Video took part. Xpression was able to deliver what ESPN would consider A-game\u2013quality graphics, from lower-thirds to full-screens to wipes, opens, scorebugs, and more. What made this solution most cost-effective was that Ross Video technicians were able to develop a system allowing all of these graphics to be run off just one channel of the Xpression engine.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/main\/files\/2012\/11\/Xpression-300x213.jpg\" "\\"Xpression-300x213\\"")
\nThe process of getting to this point took approximately two years, according to Lasker. In discussions with the school and conference, ESPN does a survey analysis of what equipment it has and what kind of production capabilities it is deploying today. ESPN then assesses how it can augment what the school is currently doing to achieve a level of quality ESPN can be pleased with.<\/p>\n