PROGRAMMING

Golf began to lock in a new course, the announcement that the Open was cancelled for the first time since 1945, with the schedule now seeing the U.S. Open now scheduled in September, the PGA Championship rolling in August (Aug. 6-9), the U.S. Open and Ryder Cup in consecutive weeks (Sept. 17-20 and Sept. 25-27 respectively), and then the Masters on Nov. 12-15. The British Open stated that the 149th Open is set for Royal St. George’s on July 15-18, leaving the 150th Open for St. Andrews the following year.

Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White stated that he has secured a private island for the promotion to be able to stage fights during the pandemic. “I’ll tell you this, I’m this close to getting a deal done,” White told ESPN. “So, this place where this fight is going to be on April 18, I have locked up for two months, so I’m going to continue to pump fights out. I also secured an island. I’ve got an island. The infrastructure is being built right now. We’re going to do all of our international fights on this island.

Meanwhile, MLB is hitting the brakes on reports that the league was looking into staging all of its games this season in Arizona as part of a plan to resume play. “While we have discussed the idea of staging games at one location as one potential option, we have not settled on that option or developed a detailed plan,” MLB said in a statement released to press. “While we continue to interact regularly with governmental and public health officials, we have not sought or received approval of any plan from federal, state, and local officials, or the Players Association.” The story follows other reports that the NBA was mulling playing solely in Las Vegas, while the NHL was looking at a number of remote options to resume play.

Speaking of the NBA, Commissioner Adam Silver stated Monday night that he does not expect the league to be able to make any decisions until next month. Silver spoke on the NBA’s Twitter account as part of the league’s new NBATogether initiative, noting “Essentially, what I’ve told my folks over the last week is that we just should just accept that, at least for the month of April, we won’t be in a position to make any decisions,” Silver said. “And I don’t think that necessarily means on May 1 we will be.”

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The four premier international dog sled races that make up the QRILL Pet Arctic World Series (Qrill PAWS) will be recapped in a four-part series that will now be televised by CBS Sports Network on Thursday and Friday at 9p. The series was packaged by Lagardère Sports. The four one-hour episodes. “Our aim has been to bring the excitement, joy, and remarkable performance from the most exotic arctic dog mushing races to a world-wide audience,” said QRILL PAWS Project Manager, Nils Marius Otterstad. “We are proud to bring these historic races in the first QRILL Pet Arctic World Series to the U.S. audience on CBS Sports Network.”

ESPN announced that its prime-time schedule has been solidified through April, as the network’s previously announced sport-specific theme nights and additional signature programming — such as “The Last Dance” documentary series, WNBA and NFL Drafts, and Masters encore presentation. Encore presentations of classic NFL (Mondays), MLB (Tuesdays), NBA (Wednesdays), and College Football (Thursdays) games began last week and will continue through the end of April. “What we are attempting to do is to provide a spinal column of sorts for the ESPN schedule in a horizontal fashion, meaning Monday through Sunday,” said ESPN Executive Vice President, Programming Burke Magnus via ESPN Front Row. “We want a typical week to have a reliable set of themed programming that attaches to particular leagues or sports and gives fans a structure by which they can rely on for top archival content. Where we landed was pretty simple – Monday night tied to Monday Night Football; Wednesday is one of our traditional NBA nights; Thursday has long been a college football night for us; while Friday night at the movies… sounded right. You add a terrific MLB block on Tuesday and The Last Dance on upcoming Sundays and you quickly have the makings of a strong lineup of memorable sports moments that can help address the desires of fans who miss those sports.”

The NHL is serving up a new slate of programming and original content featuring current and former NHL players, celebrities and award-winning broadcast personalities. The highlight of the new line-up of original content is a reunion of current members of the defending 2019 Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues via video conference tonight, which marks the originally scheduled first day of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs. This will mark the first virtual coming together of a professional sports team since the suspension of play. Fans will able to view the reunion at 8p on NHL.com, the NHL’s social channels. NBCSN will air the gathering on Monday at 6p.

On what originally was scheduled for the first day of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, NHL Network’s NHL Tonight will air a one-hour program at 6p. NHL Network’s Jamison Coyle, Jamie Hersch, Elliotte Friedman, Tony Luftman, Stephen Nelson, Mike Rupp and Kevin Weekes will provide prospective on the latest news, and Columbus Blue Jackets All-Star defenseman Seth Jones will join the show. Following NHL Tonight, NHL Network will re-air Game Seven of the 2020 Stanley Cup Final featuring the St. Louis Blues at the Boston Bruins.

NBC Sports will present the 12 most recent Stanley Cup Final clinching games on NBC throughout the month of April, beginning this weekend. Saturday will feature back-to-back Stanley Cup matchups between the Penguins and Red Wings in 2008 and 2009 at 3p. This week, NBCSN will present Hockey Happy Hour Monday-Thursday from 5-7 p.m. ET that features four unsung playoff hero performances (Jaden Schwartz, Brock McGinn, Chris Kunitz, and Alec Martinez).

SHOWTIME Sports lined up SHOWTIME Boxing Classics with regularly scheduled replays of legendary bouts from the network’s deep archive of world championship boxing, running on three consecutive Friday nights beginning April 10, at 10p on the network, with Diego Corrales vs. Jose Luis Castillo I and Diego Corrales vs. Jose Luis Castillo II.

NBA Digital launched “#NBATogether with Ernie Johnson,” a new social talk show hosted by TNT’s Inside the NBA host Ernie Johnson. The initiative features high-profile guests from across the basketball community, streaming on the NBA’s Twitter account Monday and Wednesday nights during the season hiatus.

ONE Championship announced the launch of its newest Content Stack, “Franklin Speaking,” a video podcast hosted by multiple-time mixed martial arts world champion Rich “Ace” Franklin on ONE Championship’s official YouTube channel. “Franklin Speaking” will see Rich Franklin joined by his longtime co-host Jonathan Fong as they do a deep dive with a series of interesting guests of diverse backgrounds and expertise. The two will interview guests in a long-form conversation format, discussing an array of relevant topics to engage the audience in a new and exciting way.

This week, on the originally scheduled dates for the playing of the 84th Masters Tournament, SiriusXM will offer listeners across the country re-broadcasts of the thrilling final rounds of seven memorable Masters. From today-Sunday, listeners can re-live classic Masters moments including Jack Nicklaus’ historic second-nine charge in 1986, Tiger Woods’ memorable wins in 1997, 2005 and 2019, and emotional and exciting victories by Phil Mickelson (2004), Bubba Watson (2012) and Adam Scott (2013).

A new World Golf Hall of Fame Podcast launched, examining golf’s greatest stories from its top players and contributors. The first series, Masters Moments, features six past champions chatting with host, Charlie Boots, about some of their greatest tales from Augusta National. A new episode within the Masters Moments series will be released daily through Sunday.

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DIGITAL, DATA & TECH

The New England Patriots reportedly inked a ten-year partnership with Fanatics to operate the team’s e-commerce platforms. Fanatics also becomes the manufacturer for all of the Patriots’ Nike-branded apparel starting with the beginning of the 2020 season. “Fanatics has established themselves as our industry’s preeminent sports retail company, and their scale across ecommerce and mobile shopping will create an incredible new offering for our passionate fanbase worldwide,” said Jennifer Ferron, chief marketing officer for the Patriots’ owners, Kraft Sports and Entertainment.

Yahoo Sports and the Women’s Sports Foundation announced #WeKeepPlaying, a first of its kind live event bringing together some of the most iconic women in professional sports to inspire young athletes during the COVID-19 crisis. Athletes will share their own stories of personal resilience to engage and inspire young athletes across the globe during this unprecedented time. The event will stream live on Saturday at 4p exclusively on the Yahoo Sports mobile app and YahooSports.com. The event, which will be moderated by journalist Cari Champion, will include some of the most renowned athletes across basketball, soccer, swimming, football, hockey and track & field who will speak to young athletes about the importance of staying healthy mentally, physically and emotionally.

With current physical activity levels in the U.S. being down 39%, according to a report from CNBC, PHIT America has launched a free campaign to reverse this negative trend, titled How to Cope with Coronavirus. The program is available at Coping.PHITAmerica.org.

ESPORTS

ESL Pro League reports that Season 11 broke another all-time viewership record, notching a new EPL peak record with over 16% growth in comparison to the previous high, made during the Season 9 finals. In total, the league registered more than 22.6M hours watched which is an all-time record, surpassing the Season 10 best score.

IndyCar’s iRacing Challenge event at a virtual Barber Motorsports Park averaged 165,000 across all NBC Sports viewing platforms on Saturday afternoon, according to frontstretch, to notch an audience that was 55% of the actual race at Barber pulled last year on NBCSN, which notched 296,000 viewers on NBCSN.

Activision Blizzard announced that the Call of Duty League will resume this Friday. Matches will follow the original Call of Duty League schedule, beginning with the Dallas Empire homestand that was supposed to take place on March 28-29, but all matches will now take place online with remote broadcast operations. Play runs Friday-Sunday

In sponsorship news, HyperX locked in a sponsorship program with ReKTGlobal’s London Royal Ravens Call of Duty League squad, which will now see the team’s training facility getting the support of HyperX gear. HyperX will also sponsor two Rogue teams, including its Rainbow Six Pro Team and its Rocket League teams. “HyperX has been a mainstay in competitive PC gaming for as long as I can remember,” said Dave Bialek, CEO of ReKTGlobal. “It’s an honor to have their logo on our jerseys, and their gear powering our champions’ play.”

HyperX also signed on to sponsor Allied Esports’ new online tournament offering. Allied Esports Online Tournaments Presented by HyperX are open to all levels of play and offer cash and/or HyperX products as prizing for each competition. Tournament fees are dependent on the game, with some competitions free to play. HyperX will work with Allied Esports to drive participation to the online tournaments through social media and other marketing promotion. “The current landscape has required us to come together as a team, pivot quickly and lean on trusted partners,” said Jud Hannigan, CEO of Allied Esports. “Our relationship with HyperX continues to grow and we’re fortunate to be able to work alongside them to enhance this experience for our existing community members and the fans we will engage for the first time through this new offering.”

Meanwhile, the Houston Outlaws and Zaxby’s announced their new partnership for 2020, bringing the Georgia-based restaurant chain into the world of esports through the team’s south Texas representation in Activision-Blizzard’s The Overwatch League. With this agreement, Zaxby’s becomes the team’s Exclusive Quick-Service Restaurant and will collaborate with the Outlaws organization and players to create unique content and integration into fan-based streaming and online experiences this year.

Elsewhere, Lucas Oil Products is expanding its presence in esports, beginning with a focus on the competition surrounding the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series and the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series. “Lucas Oil has always tried to be on the cutting edge of all that it involves itself with and eSports is one of the new leading areas of development within racing,” said Morgan Lucas, Senior V.P. of Sales for Lucas Oil. “We have a great family of Lucas Oil supporters and that racing goes hand-in-hand with that. eSports is an important way for us to expand our exposure to new groups while creating a bond with our existing racing community”

The NBA 2K Players Tournament Quarterfinals this week will now be held on Thursday on ESPN2 and the ESPN App. Competition starts at 7p with Rui Hachimura/Devin Booker.

League of Legends Championship Korea will shift to full-time franchises for the 2021 competitive season. The domestic South Korean league is the last of the four major League of Legends regions to move to franchising. The LCK will hold their final relegation/promotion series at the end of the current 2020 LCK Spring split.

Subaru of America is teaming with sim racing platform iRacing. The car manufacturer will be the entitlement sponsor of the Subaru iRX All-Star Invitational rallycross championship, which will see pro drivers from rally, rallycross, Indycar, and NASCAR participate in the event alongside sim racers in a six-round championship that begins on April 10.

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In the Know
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