ESPN Australia is a 24-hour sports channel offered in Australia and New Zealand.
Initially, ESPN was known as Sports ESPN on the Optus Vision cable television system, and focused on sports aired by its home network in the United States, including American football, baseball, and basketball. In order to expand its local reach, it has shown an increasing amount of football games including FA Cup, World Cup qualifying games and Major League Soccer. Also on the network schedule are rugby matches, among other sports.
ESPN Australia has also commenced showing locally produced content including Australian versions of PTI and SportsCenter. They also air a soccer discussion show Monday to Friday called ESPNsoccernet PressPass which is hosted by Andrew Orsatti.
On 1 March 2011, ESPN2 launched in Australia both in standard and high definition formats.
Video ESPN Australia
History
It became available on Austar in April 1999, and Foxtel in September 2002.
The broadcast of Jarryd Hayne's debut for the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football League on 15 September 2015 drew the network's highest ever audience with 116,000 viewers watching the game live, beating the previous audience record of 107,100 viewers for Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.
Maps ESPN Australia
Content
The following is the list of sports programming shown on the ESPN network (with some being shown only on ESPN and not ESPN2, and vice versa).
Athletics
- CrossFit Games (Only on Watch ESPN)
American Football
- National Football League (includes NFL Draft, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, all NFL Network games, NFL RedZone, Pro Bowl plus all the Playoff games and Super Bowl)
- College football (includes regular season, Heisman Trophy, College Football Playoff and College Football Championship Game)
- Canadian Football League
Baseball
- Major League Baseball (includes Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday Night Baseball, MLB Strike Zone, Home Run Derby, All-Star Game, all playoff games and World Series)
- College baseball
- Little League World Series
- World Baseball Classic
- World Cup of Softball
Basketball
- National Basketball Association (includes NBA Draft, NBA All-Star Weekend, Wednesday and Friday games (mostly doubleheaders), Saturday games (including all ABC games), ESPN/ABC games on Monday, Tuesday and Sunday, all TNT games, playoff games and NBA Finals)
- Women's National Basketball Association
- College basketball
- NBA Summer League
- NBA G League
- The Basketball Tournament
Boxing
- Golden Boy Promotions
Cricket
- Regional Super50 (Only on Watch ESPN)
eSports
- FIFA Ultimate Team Championship Series
- FACEIT X Games Rocket League Invitational (Only on Watch ESPN)
- EVO Street Fighter V World Championship
- Injustice 2
Extreme Sports
- X Games
Horse-racing
- Kentucky Derby
- Preakness Stakes
- Belmont Stakes
Ice Hockey
- World Cup of Hockey
Motor Racing
- IndyCar Series
- Indy Lights (Only on Watch ESPN)
- AMA Motocross Championship
- AMA Supercross Championship
Poker
- World Series of Poker
Rugby Union
- Top 12 de la URBA (Only on Watch ESPN)
Soccer
- FA Cup
- Community Shield
- Major League Soccer
- FIFA World Cup qualification (UEFA)
- FIFA World Cup qualification (CONMEBOL)
- UEFA European Championship qualifying
- Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup
- Florida Cup
- Toulon Tournament
- Joan Gamper Trophy
Tennis
- U.S. Open
- ATP World Tour Finals
- ATP World Tour Masters 1000
- ATP World Tour 500
- Next Generation ATP Finals
- Hobart International
- Australian Open Junior Finals
- Laver Cup
- World Tennis Challenge
Volleyball
- World Series of Beach Volleyball
Other programming
- NCAA events
- PBA Bowling
- ESPN Films
- Billiards
- World's Strongest Man
- ESPY Award
News and talk shows
- Around the Horn
- E:60
- First Take
- Highly Questionable
- His & Hers
- Jalen & Jacob
- Mike & Mike
- Outside the Lines
- Pardon the Interruption
- SportsCenter
- SportsNation
- The Sports Reporters
ESPN HD
ESPN HD was one of the first five channels to be available in HD when Foxtel HD+ launched. ESPN HD commenced in June 2008. The SD version of ESPN began broadcasting in widescreen on 25 January 2010. On 2 June 2011 ESPN HD (the HD simulcast) and ESPN3.com launched in New Zealand on Sky.
ESPN 3D
ESPN 3D launched in Australia on the 30th, July 2010. The channel launched to show 8 hours of the X Games 16 live in 3D. ESPN 3D is currently only available in the U.S. and Australia via Foxtel IQ2 and Austar MyStar HD. Foxtel 3D launched on 1 November 2010 which shows all of ESPN 3D's content - with ESPN 3D no longer having its own channel. Since the launch of Foxtel 3D, Austar has not had access to 3D content from ESPN, with it unknown if Austar will offer Foxtel 3D any time in the near future.
See also
- List of sports television channels
References
External links
- ESPN Australia website
- Watch ESPN website
Source of article : Wikipedia