 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Sports promoter |
| Predecessor | Creative Sports Ohlmeyer Communications Corporation ESPN Plus ESPN Regional Television |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Pete Derzis (general manager/senior vice president) |
| Owners | The Walt Disney Company (80%) Hearst Communications (20%) |
| Parent | ESPN Inc. |
| Website | www.ESPNEvents.com |
ESPN Events is an American multinational sporting event promoter owned by ESPN Inc. It is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, and shares its operations with SEC Network and formerly with ESPNU. The corporation organizes sporting events for broadcast across the ESPN family of networks, including, most prominently, a group of college football bowl games and in-season college basketball tournaments.
ESPN Events previously operated primarily as a syndicator of college sports broadcasts; the company was founded as Creative Sports, a sports programming syndicator that merged with Don Ohlmeyer's OCC Sports in 1996. After ESPN purchased the merged company, the division was renamed ESPN Regional Television (ERT), which distributed telecasts for syndication on broadcast stations and regional sports networks; these telecasts were also available on the ESPN GamePlan and ESPN Full Court out-of-market sports packages. Most of ERT's broadcasts were presented under the on-air branding ESPN Plus (not to be confused with ESPN+, the current subscription service), but this name was later phased out in favor of dedicated on-air brands for each package, such as SEC Network (later renamed SEC TV as to not be confused with the then-upcoming SEC Network cable channel).
Following its acquisition of the Las Vegas Bowl in 2001, ERT began to double as an organizer of sporting events. The subdivision, which later began to operate under the name ESPN Events, would acquire and establish other bowl games to provide additional post-season opportunities for bowl-eligible teams. ESPN Events also organizes several pre-season tournaments in college basketball, as well as the season-opening Camping World Kickoff and Texas Kickoff football games. All ESPN Events are broadcast by ESPN's networks.[1]
ESPN Regional Television began to wind down its syndication operations in the 2010s, as the proliferation of competing outlets (including other sports channels, conference-specific networks such as ESPN's own SEC Network, as well as digital services such as ESPN's own ESPN3 and WatchESPN platforms) took over most of the conference rights and overflow formerly held by the company.
- ^ Brent Schrotenboer (December 11, 2012). "The Windfall Bowl: Pay for bowl directors keeps rising". USA Today. Gannett Company. Retrieved January 8, 2013.