ESPN’s turn at this year’s upfronts, anchored by the tagline “ESPN @ The Speed of Live,” saw the company play up the live-event elements and announce that its channels will begin counting out of home viewers to it ratings. “We’re excited about the idea we’re going to measure our whole audience,” ESPN President John Skipper told reporters, adding that its WatchESPN platform added between 6-7% to its audiences, with launch set for 2017.

In addition, ESPN introduced LiveConnect, described as “a new product offering for advertisers that considers the emotional state of fans to determine which advertising will resonate best in the moment.” The service will leverage data and connect it with the live sports environment, with the company working with clients to create a variety of messages and then deliver a different execution, based upon the outcomes in live games and highlights and a fan’s anticipated emotional state. “At its core, this is about building on our live content advantage and the emotion of sports fans to create better advertising and better results for our clients,” said Ed Erhardt, president, Global Sales and Marketing. “Targeting is one piece of the puzzle – but targeting alone does not result in effective advertising. We’re building out a key pillar that utilizes data to help us get to a place where fans see the right message at the right time, in our live environment.”