The Sport Thread

[valley]

Am I right in saying Sky Sports Golf is not rebranding to Sky Sports Masters this week? Can't see any suggestion of a change on the schedule or elsewhere.

I believe that’s correct.

[thebigdog2020]

[Brekkie]

Fair play to them they've come a long way in 6 years.

[thegeek]

the FA have given notice to UEFA that they want to suspend the 3pm blackout window on April 16th - it's mostly so the BBC can show their FA Cup semi-final at 3.30pm, but it means some European matches will probably be on TV in that slot too.

[Brekkie]

Quite surprised next weeks Women's World Cup Qualifier between NI and England is on BBC2 rather than BBC1. BBC2/3 is understandable for most qualifiers but I'd have thought this would have got a shot on BBC1, especially with the Euros coming up, which I assume will largely be on BBC2/3 but with England games at least on BBC1.

[commseng]

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphy180/statu...opc5A&s=19

They ended up abandoning the coverage towards the end of the Jules van Dongen and Ryan de Vreede match.

Tonight's final match between Wayne Warren and Lee Shewan has had to be rescheduled for tomorrow night instead.

It is bad luck to lose two gennys or both halves of a twin set, but it does happen.

[TIGHazard]

Quite surprised next weeks Women's World Cup Qualifier between NI and England is on BBC2 rather than BBC1. BBC2/3 is understandable for most qualifiers but I'd have thought this would have got a shot on BBC1, especially with the Euros coming up, which I assume will largely be on BBC2/3 but with England games at least on BBC1.

Wondered what would happen with that as surely ITV would also have rights to show it.

[Brekkie]

Doesn't look like it - not sure how the Women's rights are packaged. I'm guessing like the mens used to be with ITV buying the rights to the home games then the away games sold on a match by match basis. If so also possible the FA have bought those rights themselves to package with the home games, but understandable NI wouldn't be included if they already had a deal in place with the BBC.

[madmusician]

Fair play to them they've come a long way in 6 years.

They've actually been going for just under 12 years now - I remember Jake, DC and the VT producer Sunil setting it up towards the middle/end of the 2010 F1 season. They seemed to focus on 'corporate' productions for F1 teams at first, and it was after their seed funding from Channel 4 that they really started to grow, winning the C4 F1 production contract at the start of 2016 and picking up all sorts of things after that, whilst continuing to grow the company.

[Brekkie]

Another example of how important C4 is then. Presumably C4 are getting returns on their growth too.

[thebigdog2020]

Probably expected but Sky Sports sign rights to show the Masters for further 2 years, also to show the rights in Ireland for the first time this week. Eir Sports had the Irish rights until last year.

https://www.skysports.com/golf/news/2451...a-national

[Sky303]

ESPN 2 had a special NBA retro night , each quarter was presented as a different decade 60's through 90's They also had special guests, this was an alternate broadcast to ESPN's airing in standard form.

[Rdd]

Probably expected but Sky Sports sign rights to show the Masters for further 2 years, also to show the rights in Ireland for the first time this week. Eir Sports had the Irish rights until last year.

https://www.skysports.com/golf/news/2451...a-national

They had been showing it in Ireland anyway, on a non exclusive basis - neither it nor (when they had it live) the BBC coverage was blocked.

One advantage of having eir Sport cover the Masters was that they showed the world feed, which was (mostly) the domestic ESPN and CBS coverage. Including the lovely piano theme “Augusta”.

[JAS84]

ESPN 2 had a special NBA retro night , each quarter was presented as a different decade 60's through 90's They also had special guests, this was an alternate broadcast to ESPN's airing in standard form.

I see this was a local derby (Brooklyn is in New York City, so they're both New York teams) and a really tight scoreline too! Must've been an exciting game for basketball fans.

The graphics though, cannot be based on what ESPN used at the time. ESPN didn't even exist until 1979 - the logo used on the 60s and 70s graphics ran from 1979 to 1985, when it was replaced by the current one. I wonder if the graphics are instead based on the also-Disney-owned ABC's?

[Hatton Cross]

Could be - but CBS also had NBA rights from the late 70's onwards, so those ESPN graphics yesterday seems to be an 'era generic' look, using a font that was used on the supers and primative computer cap gen kits back in the day.