International Sports Presentation

That reminds me a lot of what they do for the local West Indies matches, not sure of the host broadcaster there, but they use very different ones for tests, so I suppose there’s hope if you dislike what Spark are doing above.

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bost mod

Or the bort mod, for that matter

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Every time I see Bort I always think of “The Matrix”, only true MS doyens will know to what I refer :smile:

Just to prove the graphics are Spark Sport’s and Spark Sport’s alone…

Here’s a cap from today’s second T20, not being broadcast on TVNZ.

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When Ian Bishop did the pitch report today, he used a SS/TVNZ mic.

Don’t like the scoreboard, but the rest of the graphics package looks quite nice.

Completely disagree. They are perfect for a streaming platform and are miles better than Fox Sports’ current cricket package.

For those who like a balance between commentators from the opposing nations, I’m sure you’ll like Supersport having more England commentators than South Africans for their current white ball series. Of the 6 they have there’s 3 Englishman (Atherton, Hussain, Nicholas), 2 South Africans (Pollock and one other) and Pommie Mbangwa (real first name Mupemelo) who’s a Zimbabwean. Presentation was done without any presentation party or physical media representation, interviews done remotely.

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JP Duminy is the other South African.

Supersport has a nice graphics package.

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Fair few graphics issues for Spark in their first domestic T20 games this morning (simulcast on TVNZ1).


They’ve modified the score bar from internationals but it’s aligned to the left and is missing some details, making it look weird.

In addition, the score bar died early in the innings and was replaced with a stop gap solution in the lower left corner but they couldn’t display full screens/full scorecards.

The full score bar returned early in the second innings and then crashed again.

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Noticed too for the first nights of the NBA coverage on TNT that the play by play and colour commentator were based in different studios away from the venue (when they went to the bubble to complete last season they had a booth at the venue). For example Marv Albert (who’s ancient these days) was in New York, his partner Chris Webber was in Atlanta, when they were calling a Golden State @ Brooklyn season opener. Same went for Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller for the LA “Derby” although Harlan needs to be kept “clean” for NFL commitments on CBS for a few more weeks. It was noticeable that Albert in particular was a little behind the call on his screen, although whether that’s technology or age related is hard to tell.

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Kevin Harlan is calling from his basement in Kansas.
There’s a nice piece on The Athletic (:lock:) about it and his set up.

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As they usually do, ESPN freshened-up their graphics package with last night’s college football playoffs.

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Good to see Katey Martin part of the Spark comms team

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Nice espn graphics

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A bit of old news, and I can’t find an appropriate thread, but this is interesting:

Does anyone else think channels here would be open to selling the naming rights to their channels? Especially betting companies for sports channels?

Of course, it should be stated, Sinclair is a reprehensible broadcaster - of course they’d team up with a casino.

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Yes, I could imagine there being channels like “Sportsbet NRL” or “TAB (Sky) Racing” here in Australia!

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There’s also the fact that purchasing those Fox Sports RSNs haven’t turned out to be the money-making machine Sinclair thought they would (mostly due to the impact Coronavirus has had on the major US leagues). As such, selling the naming rights to the channels will probably help recoup some of the losses they’ve incurred:

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What also hasn’t helped is the amount of debt I’m assuming they took on buying station after station. Sinclair and Nexstar are in for a world of pain if terrestrial keeps going down the shitter.

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Couldn’t happen to a nicer company…

That said, they’ll probably do well flipping their spectrum in the 5G incentive auctions.

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