Rebooting Content: Broadcasting Sport and Esports to Homes During COVID-19

Abstract

Beginning in early March 2020, sport in the United States entered an unprecedented period of hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The postponement, suspension, and cancellation of live sporting events impacted every professional and amateur sport organization, from the National Basketball Association to the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, high school sports to college football, and even esports leagues. Although the abrupt cancellation of live sporting events was disruptive, it did create opportunities for the production of new media and consumption opportunities for sport leagues, teams, and their fans through different types of sport media broadcasts. This commentary examines how the U.S. sport industry developed media content strategies using new, mixed, and rebroadcasted content, across multiple broadcast and streaming platforms, to provide sport consumption opportunities to fans who were largely quarantined at home. This research contributes to the existing scholarship on live and rebroadcasted mediated content, while providing guidance to content owners and rights holders facing uncertainty in the marketplace.

An Analysis of Broadcasting Media Using Social Media Engagement in the WNBA

“…For example, the WNBA has embraced Twitter, with a correlation between team profitability and frequency of tweeting leading to the suggestion that teams should embrace Twitter and use it to update followers ingame (Shreffler et al, 2015). Moreover, the WNBA has been effective in their use of social media, such as the 2020 draft having 1.3 million minutes watched on WNBA and NBA social media accounts (Goldman and Hedlund, 2020). Additionally, as previously mentioned, the WNBA leverages numerous different broadcasting options including Twitter.…”

X’s and O’s, Angles and Games

“…Scholars have predicted the post-COVID sports broadcast world could look different from what it was pre-COVID, in terms of content (Binganam, 2020;Goldman & Hedlund, 2020) and workflow (Coche & Lynn, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a reminder of the importance of sport in society (Coche & Lynn, 2020;Goldman & Hedlund, 2020), and, by extension, the importance of sports communication research for society. Conducting practical research now is all the more relevant as the media industry is experiencing an accelerated adoption of new technology and production changes as a result of the pandemic (Coche & Lynn, 2020;Davies, 2020;Werteen, 2020).…”

“…As entertainment programming, sports serve an important social role (Serazio, 2019) and they fulfill their role via in-person spectating and mediated sports broadcasts. Indeed, sport and media, including broadcast, are so intrinsically interdependent (Greer et al, 2009) that change in either industry is likely to affect the other, and both have a significant impact on the American economy and society (e.g., Au, 2017;Goldman & Hedlund, 2020). During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, mediated sports broadcasts were often the only connection between sports fans and the events, as spectators were either not allowed into the venues, or allowed in very limited numbers.…”

“…With sports broadcasting going through "drastic changes" (p. 492), studying the effects of new camera angles on viewers' ability to understand what they are watching could directly guide the development of new production practices in the post-COVID sports broadcast world. The sports lockdown in 2020 reminded people how important sport is in American society (Coche & Lynn, 2020;Goldman & Hedlund, 2020). When NBC Sports used the Skycam, executive producer Sam Flood announced the network was planning on increasing the use of the angle over time (Deitsch, 2018), but that has not happened in practice-presumably because of negative social media reactions to the use of the novel angle.…”

Esports Spectating Motives and Streaming Consumption: Moderating Effect of Game Genres and Live-Streaming Types

“…Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the postponement, suspension, and cancellation of live sporting events in the United States. While this unprecedented period disrupted sport, it has facilitated consumers' engagements associated with physical culture (e.g., virtual consumption such as esports games) due to strict public health policy such as lockdowns and social isolation [3,4].…”