04/04/18: MLB and Tencent locked deal to bring baseball to China

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Good morning. It’s Wednesday April 4, 2018 and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.

Major League Baseball continues to plow inroads in China, announcing a deal with Tencent Holdings Limited to live stream MLB games and MLB highlight programs in the country. Tencent will also support and broadcast MLB developmental events to help grow the sport of baseball in China. Overall, Tencent will live stream 125 games and will launch with Super Baseball Week, five consecutive days of games featuring some of the sport’s top stars. After the first week, Tencent will then live stream regular season games on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday as well as the All-Star Game presented by Mastercard, T-Mobile Home Run Derby, and every game of the Postseason and World Series presented by YouTube TV.

ON THE AIR

TBS, TNT and TruTV saw coverage of Villanova’s blowout victory over Michigan to claim the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship bring Nielsen overnight numbers that dipped 29% versus the comparable 2017 game. The contest hit an all-time low 10.3 rating among households. Numbers were led by Detroit, which averaged a 21.4 rating, edging out Philly’s 21.2 score.

In other ratings news, ESPN reports that its lineup of weekday daytime studio shows showed audience growth in March vs. the same period in 2017. First Takescored its most-viewed March ever, averaging 433,000 viewers, up 2%. The midnight SportsCenter swelled 15% to an average of 632,000, while the 6p show is up 4% to an average of 498,000. NFL Live was up 10% to 330,000, The Jump grew 6% to an average of 326,000 and SportsNation rose 4% to an average of 352,000.

Speaking of ESPN, the company serves up all three games of the Frozen Four from Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul with the semifinals featuring Minnesota Duluth/Ohio State at 6p and Michigan/Notre Dame at 9:30p on Thursday on ESPN2. John Buccigross, Barry Melrose and Quint Kessenich will be on the call with ESPN featuring Ref Camfor the second consecutive year. ESPN3 and the ESPN App will have a separate presentation of all three games: The Ref and Robo Camstreaming option.

Elsewhere in hockey, NBCSports heads into the final week of the 2017-18 NHL regular season with five games featuring playoff implications, including the Rangers/Flyers on Saturday at 3p on NBC.

FOX Sports named Jimmy Smith to join analyst Joe Rogan and blow-by-blow announcer Jon Anik to call UFC 223: Khabib vs. Holloway live from Brooklyn on FS1 on Saturday at 8p. UFC welterweight contender Santiago Ponzinibbio and Victor Davila call the Spanish language telecast on FOX Deportes. Meanwhile, former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping, former light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans and lead UFC host Karyn Bryantare on the FOX Sports desk in the Los Angeles studio for UFC 223 programming on Friday and Saturday.

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Celebrating Media’s Civic-Minded Professionals…

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We will be honoring everything from sustainability partnerships and PSA’s, to diversity campaigns, environmental initiatives, and more. Be in the room as finalists are celebrated and winners announced! Register your team today .

SPONSORSHIP & PROMOTION

BIG3 and Adidas locked in a three-year partnership in which Adidas will serve as the official outfitter of the league. The deal tips off at the 2018 BIG3 Combine on April 11 in LA with Adidas will be the presenting partner. The league will also collaborate with Adidas for ongoing player development and grassroots efforts. Adidas will be the official BIG3 jersey provider, outfitting all players in addition to developing new lines of licensed products for fans.

ExxonMobil inked a new partnership with Anthony Davis that will see the New Orleans Pelicans forward become the star of the new Mobil 1 Annual Protection advertising campaign, which provides drivers proven protection for 20,000 miles between oil changes.

The LA Kings launched a new partnership with UBS, establishing the wealth manager as an official partner of the NHL franchise. The agreement will provide branding and in-game activations while highlighting the firm’s financial products and services throughout Los Angeles.

The Michael Kors brand will be entering the world of golf courtesy of a sponsorship of South African professional golfer and Masters champion Charl Schwartzel. The partnership will feature Schwartzel as the brand’s first golf ambassador wearing Michael Kors Mens apparel throughout his worldwide tour appearances, which include PGA, European and Sunshine tour events.

DIGITAL & STREAMING

MLB and Twitter launch the weekly Twitter game of the week on Thursday, with out-of-market live streaming of the Rangers and Athletics at 3:35p. The game marks the first of the weekly day-game live streams of out-of-market MLB games Twitter will make available once per week throughout the 2018 season. Again this year, MLB will also make real-time game highlights available for fans from @MLB on Twitter throughout the season.

ESPN’s latest installment of the 30 for 30documentary series, “The Last Days of Knight,” will be the first film in the series to appear exclusively on ESPN+. “The Last Days of Knight” will be joined on ESPN+ by the entire archive of 30 for 30 films, more than 100 in total.

Podcast production company Cadence13 announced the launch of Trail Blazers’ guard CJ McCollum’s new podcast, Pull Up with CJ McCollum, which will go live on all podcast platforms today. The weekly series takes on the storylines around the NBA, with “candid revelations behind the scenes and off of the court from one of the most dynamic stars in the league.”

ESPORTS

The NBA 2K League hits its inaugural draft tomorrow with news about new partnerships with Dell and Intel. Dell will serve as the Official PC Hardware and Monitor Partner, leveraging its elite gaming brand, Alienware, throughout the new NBA 2K League Studio and alongside the players in their team training facilities with games being played on Alienware PCs powered by the 8thGen Intel Core i7-8700K Processor accompanied by Alienware’s 25” 240 Hz gaming monitors. In addition, Alienware and Intel will both make significant marketing commitments with the new NBA 2K League. Alienware will be the presenting partner of two highly visible programs – the NBA 2K League Draft Clash, a tournament on April 6 featuring 10 of the top picks from the inaugural NBA 2K League Draft on April 4, and the NBA 2K League Halftime Show. Intel will be the presenting partner of the NBA 2K League Studio.

Speaking of which, the first-ever NBA 2K League Draft Clash presented by Alienware, will serve as an exhibition tournament featuring 10 of the top NBA 2K League draft picks, on Friday at the PAX East 2018 gaming conference in Boston. The event will be available live on Twitch through the PAX East stream and NBA 2K League stream. The League unveiled yesterday the pool of 102 players who will become the competitive gaming league’s first professionals when the inaugural season tips off in May. Teams will select one player at each position (point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, center) over the first five rounds before selecting a second player at the position of their choice in the sixth round.

Continuing the theme, NBA 2K League team Grizz Gaming announced America’s Navy as the presenting partner of its inaugural season. Through mutual priorities of competition, teamwork, and modern technology, the partnership aims to tell the story of America’s Navy to the next generation of younger, digital-savvy esports fans via nontraditional avenues. “All of us at Grizz Gaming are thrilled to partner with America’s Navy,” said Grizz Gaming General Manager Lang Whitaker. “As the grandson of a Navy veteran, I was raised to understand the importance of teamwork, courage, honor and respect, and these are all values we want our Grizz Gaming squad to reflect.”

In other big esports news, Supercell, the developers of Clash Royale, detailed plans for The Clash Royale League dedicated to the title. North America will be represented by: Cloud9 Esports, Team SoloMid, Tribe Gaming, Immortals, NRG, Complexity, 100 Thieves and Counter Logic Gaming. Each of these teams will be building a roster for their Clash Royale team from the pool of players that completed the in-game Clash Royale League Challenge. The European region will be represented by FNATIC, Misfits, SK Gaming, G2 Esports, Team Liquid, Team Queso, Team Dignitas and Allegiance. Mainland China will be represented by EDG.M, GO, JDG, LGD, NOVA, OP, SNAKE, WE and Asia will be represented by OGN Entus, Sandbox, Kingzone, OP.GG, GameWith, PONOS Sports, DetonatioN Gaming, FAV Gaming, AHQ ESPORTS CLUB, KIX, Chaostheroy and Bren Esports. The teams representing the Latin American region of the CRL will be announced at a later date.

The French Tennis Federation and BNP Paribas added details to the launch of the Roland-Garros eSeries by BNP Paribas, with a qualifying phase, organized in the run-up to the French Open held in eight countries: China, India, Brazil, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy and Spain. Every event will be contested by 32 participants. The winners from each country will then play each other in the grand final, which will take place at Roland Garros stadium on May 25, with competition played on the forthcoming video game “Tennis World Tour”, published by Bigben.

ROSTER MOVES

NASCAR announced that Steve Phelps has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer. Phelps will oversee all NASCAR commercial and media operations. “Steve has worked passionately over the years to lead the sport and it’s clear his impact is felt in all corners of the industry,” said NASCAR President Brent Dewar. “We could not be more thrilled for him to step into the pivotal role of COO and we look forward to welcoming him back to Daytona Beach, where he’ll continue to work closely with myself and the other members of the executive leadership team, including the Board of Directors.”

THE MAIN EVENT

Celtics/Raptors on ESPN at 8p.

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ON THIS DAY in 2001: Hideo Nomo becomes the fourth player to throw a no hitter in both the AL and NL.

In the Know: Who traditionally selects the menu at The Champions’ Dinner before the Masters? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: Which golfer has competed the most times at the Masters? Answer: Gary Player. Kudos: John Ferlazzo/London; Tom Wetzel-MMSI/Warwick; Jeff Miller-WUPA-TV/Atlanta; Synda Kollman-Charter Marketing Group/Boca Raton; Todd N. Teitel-Spectrum Reach/Louisville; Andy Pittman-TAMU/College Station; Joe Lyons-SOS Global/Dallas; Lance Phegley-Texas Runner & Triathlete magazine/Houston; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/Burbank

Later – Chris

Chris Pursell @VegasandVine
Roberta Caploe Publisher @robertacaploe	Diane K Schwartz Senior Vice President Media Communications Group	Cynopsis Ad Sales Mike Farina \| 203-218-6480 VP, Sales	Cynopsis Job Listings Sales Trish Pihonak \| 203-899-8459 Director of Operations

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