ESPN wants fans ‘closer to action’ when sports return
With or without fans, pandemic or not, sports will eventually return. ESPN is banking on it.
While the Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance” has helped carry the network while sports leagues are halted during the pandemic, ESPN is biding its time until live games are back, no matter how they look.
“We’re trying to figure out, when sports resume, in many cases without fans in the stand, how we can bring the presentations to life in more interesting and intimate ways,” Connor Schnell, the executive vice president of content for ESPN, said in a presentation to advertisers last week.
“We’re really trying to apply the lessons learned from the NFL draft, where we brought fans into the homes of prospects and decisionmakers, and the lessons we’ve learned from covering the UFC over the last few weeks, where they’ve staged events without fans.”
The 2020 NFL draft, hosted by Commissioner Roger Goodell from his basement, drew a record 55 million viewers over the three-day event, while the relocated UFC 249 was up 42% in viewership over UFC 237 at the same time last year.
But those numbers are assumed to be inflated due to a lack of options, with the usual summer programming of baseball on standby.
MLB and the NBA are working their way back to starting or re-starting their seasons, which would provide ESPN with the live sports they rely on, even with a Tom Brady docuseries in the works.
“We’re thinking about new camera presentations and angles, how we can use audio to capture natural sound in really interesting ways and really provide an access that brings fans closer to the action,” Schnell said.
“We’ve seen the power that sports has in our culture through this moment and we’ve seen how fans associate sports with ESPN. There’s incredible pent-up demand for sports to come back and, when sports do return, it will be a real moment for our culture.”