While partnering with the Walt Disney Studio and Creative Artists Agency, the company that dominates sports on television, ESPN, is taking sports to the movie screen. The films would have a sports theme. This new expansion includes a hiring of 30 filmmakers that will produce one-hour mini-movies. The mini-movies are set to air in September 2009.
“We see this as a new way to reach sports fans and engage them,” said Keith Clinkscales, ESPN’s senior vice president for content development.
The owner of ESPN is Walt Disney; Disney will be the financial provider for the films or from outside investors.
The purpose of the new venture is to face recent challenges in its core operations. ESPN already has successful empire in magazines, Internet, and an array of cable television channels. Another approach to face the challenges ESPN operators are facing is by hiring sports journalists from magazines and newspapers.
One issue that ESPN needs to avoid is messing up the relationship with sports leagues. This already occured previously with the NFL and the show "Playmakers." The show featured steroid use and hiding cocain by the football players.
While this is a great move, part of me thinks that there are enough sports films out there already. The majority of them have the same plot line. I do think it would have been interesting to see Space Jam produced again by the makers at ESPN.
Do you think movies will be a successful route for ESPN? Do you think they will be able to avoid the problem of messing up their ties with sports leagues?
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3 comments:
Like you, I am a little bit weary about this. Yes, part of me thinks that it is a great idea. I know that I love sports movies. To me they always have a good plot line, but at the same time most of them do follow in each others footsteps. It will be intersting to see what comes about from this. Hopefully they will not mess up their relationships with the sports leagues by putting things in their that do not need to be seen on film. I think that they should consider the audiences and how they are portraying the sports leagues. Yes, maybe the sports leagues participate in illegal activities, but not all of them and it would be in their best interest to just leave that out!
Just as you said, there are many sports movies that run along the same story line and we do not really need more. I am a huge ESPN and I hope their new investment pays off for them. With these new movies only running for 1 hour each, it will be difficult to see how they could make this last for a long period of time.
Nope, sounds like another bad idea form the soulless organization called Disney. The grandson of founder Walt Disney was even kick off of their executive board, sorry about the rant... Sports movies have been big money ticket in the past for the industry. Concerning the issue of drug use, it should stay in the forefront, these people children lookup too. There is no reason why drug use should be tolerated and ESPN isn't lying about the NFL doesn't like the bad publicity. So, that sounds more like a mismanagement issue that the NFL needs to fix, rather than something to be swept underneath the rug!
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