December 19, 200619 yr ESPN acquired national TV rights to the Arena Football League on Tuesday and also will have a minority stake in the 19-team indoor league. The network will have a regular Monday night slot in which it will televise 14 games from March through June. The ArenaBowl title game in New Orleans will be July 29 on ABC, which also will show two regional season openers on Sunday afternoon, March 4. In all, 26 regular-season and nine postseason games will be televised on ESPN/ABC outlets. ESPN also will have extensive multimedia rights in the five-year deal that includes everything from Internet to radio to publishing to international distribution. "Clearly, AFL fans are sports fans and sports fans go first to ESPN,'' said AFL commissioner David Baker, who in his 10 years on the job has seen franchise values increase from $400,000 each to about $20 million. "It is good for our fans. We have extremely young demographics who generally turn to (ESPN) as the first place to find sports information ? whether on the network or any of their 15 platforms for distribution.'' NBC had a small equity stake in the league through a contract that expired after the 2006 season, and the network chose not to renew. Last year, more than 65 million television viewers watched AFL games on NBC or a variety of cable outlets that included Fox Sports Net, OLN and Comcast. The league currently is in negotiations with those networks, plus NFL Network and satellite radio for other broadcast packages. But the main broadcast partner clearly will be ESPN. "We are committed to the Arena Football League and its exciting brand of football,'' ESPN executive vice president John Skipper said. "We will help grow the league across all of our multimedia platforms.'' Wow the AFL is now going big time with ESPN.... :cool
December 21, 200619 yr they have arena football but not hockey? lol i love this country. My thoughts exactly when hearing this news. *sigh* Don't ever confuse ESPN with sports journalism. It is an entertainment network built purely on profitability. Crap sells to the masses. T.O. Randy Moss. Spree. Hockey doesn't.
December 21, 200619 yr they have arena football but not hockey? lol i love this country. My thoughts exactly when hearing this news. *sigh* Don't ever confuse ESPN with sports journalism. It is an entertainment network built purely on profitability. Crap sells to the masses. T.O. Randy Moss. Spree. Hockey doesn't. Yeah it might have crap, but its still the worldwide leader in sports
December 21, 200619 yr the AFL is very entertaining - love checking out the rattlers games - it also translates to TV fairly well - hockey as much as I love it live (and I do watch a lot on TV w/Center Ice) doesn't translate so well also it's cheaper to put on something like the AFL
December 21, 200619 yr they have arena football but not hockey? lol i love this country. America does not like hockey. America likes football. /story
December 23, 200619 yr they have arena football but not hockey? lol i love this country. America does not like hockey. America likes football. /story America loved hockey up until the late-90's and it was far bigger than baseball at the time.
December 24, 200619 yr I hate it when ESPN shows crap. :thumbdown So you hate ESPN 99% of the time? Fixed. they have arena football but not hockey? lol i love this country. My thoughts exactly when hearing this news. *sigh* Don't ever confuse ESPN with sports journalism. It is an entertainment network built purely on profitability. Crap sells to the masses. T.O. Randy Moss. Spree. Hockey doesn't. Yeah it might have crap, but its still the worldwide leader in sports Worldwide Leader in Sports is just a marketing slogan because that is definitely not true. You can't be the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" and not show the most popular sports worldwide, which are soccer, Formula 1, WRC, hockey, etc. Perhaps they're the leaders in "American Sports Entertainment" but that's pretty much it. Just because something is popular doesn't make it good. The Backstreet Boys were also popular.
December 24, 200619 yr TNN, ESPN2, and ABC used to air the Arena Football League. Then they balked and let NBC get them for a while. Now ESPN comes running back after seeing how NBC was able to work it. ESPN hasn't created a new property in how many years now? They lost MLB big time when TBS was able to outbid and outmuscle them for the Division Series, LCS and Sunday Afternoon game rights. As for the NHL, rumor is NBC will pick it up until 2010 (next Winter Olympics on NBC) and that next season NBC will air games every weekend of the season as the current deal is likely to be expanded to also possibly include all games of the Stanley Cup Finals. The Versus deal will grow well enough to meet the 70 million (already there) and may get to ESPN's 90 million within the next year or two as Comcast finally gets everything in gear over there. My question is what is the NBA going to do to convince ABC, ESPN, and TNT to renew at anywhere near the NBA wants? The NFL, NHL, and MLB pretty much have TV deals done for a while...but the NBA is about due. NBC might try, but with what cable entry....USA again? I doubt FOX would want to since they already have the NFL, NASCAR, MLB (all 26 weeks in 2007!), and BCS rights. CBS could try...but they have the NCAA and Golf commitments every weekend.
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