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By: Carolyn Braff, Editor Thursday, December 3, 2009 - 4:18 pm |
For this Friday’s World Cup Draw, ESPN has more than tripled its coverage since the last time around, blocking out three hours of studio time as the group play brackets are revealed. Three hours is a large broadcast window in which to fill in 32 blanks, so ESPN is going into the event with a hybrid philosophy.
World Cup Draftology
“It’s somewhere between the NFL draft and NCAA bracketology,” explains Bill Graff, senior coordinating producer for ESPN. “The philosophy is to provide the soccer fan with everything they need to know about what is about to happen, what is happening, and what just happened over the course of three hours. We’re trying to be a full-service network in and around the Draw.”
ESPN will have a head start in that quest, since ESPN2’s coverage will begin at 12 noon ET, 45 minutes before the Draw is set to begin in Cape Town, South Africa. The network will use that time to get the casual fan up to speed on how the Draw allocates the 32 qualified teams into eight groups of four.
“In the first 45 minutes leading up to the Draw, we’ll do a healthy dose of explaining what you’re about to see,” Graff says. “We also want to give people background on South Africa, where everything’s going to be happening, and what’s going on down there.”
An Expanded Lineup
An extensive roster of hosts and analysts will guide viewers through the three-hour show. The home-base team in ESPN’s Bristol, CT, studios will consist of host Bob Ley and former World Cup participants Efan Ekoku, John Harkes, Alexi Lalas, and Steve McManaman. Jeremy Schaap will provide live reports from the Cape Town International Convention Center in South Africa, joined by such guests as Ruud Gullit, a member of ESPN’s coverage team for the 2010 World Cup, and U.S. national team head coach Bob Bradley.
Four More Information
Consistent with all 64 World Cup matches, ESPN will present the Draw in high definition. As with ESPN’s NFL Draft coverage, a full compression and three-part graphical interface will offer additional information for viewers watching in HD.
“There is a full compression that we’re using, but it’s a little different than the NFL Draft because we’re concentrating on 32 teams, not 300 players,” Graff says. “We’re concentrating on the countries that are playing and their histories, some of the stars that are in the game, and what the matchups are.”
The coverage will be anchored by ESPN’s signature bottom line, with a secondary bottom line of additional information visible on both HD and SD screens. The HD viewer will also see a right-hand column with supplementary information “above and beyond what the other two lines are doing,” Graff says. “So we’re offering three streams of information, plus everything that we’re doing within the show.”
Not Enough Hours in the Day
Those additional streams should come in handy. Graff says his biggest challenge is fitting everything his team wants to cover into the three-hour broadcast window.
“We’ve got four hours’ worth of content that we’re going to try to cram into three hours,” Graff says. “FIFA does a full pregame show themselves, and we want to give people a feel for that without sitting on their show the whole time. That will be another challenge, getting all of the important things that they’re doing while still giving people our talent and setting up the Draw.”
Perhaps the most important challenge that Graff’s team must overcome is finding a balance between providing in-depth analysis and keeping the show moving.
“When everything is presented as quickly as it is, we need to get immediate reactions from all of the guests and analysts that we have,” Graff says. “Organizing that in a way that’s easy to consume is the real challenge after the Draw.”
Catering to the Real Fan
Although ESPN will spend the early part of its coverage bringing all viewers up to a basic understanding, with such experienced analysts in the studio, the bulk of the coverage will focus on the core viewer: “the real soccer fan,” Graff says. “We won’t just stop at that cursory level of 32 teams drawn up into eight groups of four. We’ll get into what the theories are of who goes where and how it gets done.”
For ESPN’s World Cup announce team, the Draw will serve as a dry run, with Friday marking the first time that they have worked together on-air.
“I’m very interested to see their interaction in and around the surprises that come out of the Draw,” Graff says. “Three hours is a daunting task, but we think we have the content to do it, and we’re excited.”
Pick Your Platform
In addition to the three hours of live coverage on ESPN2, ESPN Deportes will provide Spanish-language analysis, predictions, and post-Draw reactions. ESPN2’s live program will also be available on ESPN360.com and ESPN Mobile TV, while ESPN.com, ESPNsoccernet.com, and ESPNDeportes.com will provide additional opinion and analysis from soccer experts. ESPN International will televise the Draw in Brazil, Latin America, the Pacific Rim, and the Atlantic and Caribbean regions, as well as in the Middle East and Israel.
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