ESPN’s saturation of World Cup coverage into the United States has added another source. Sirius/XM radio announced today that the sattelite radio provider will broadcast ESPN Radio’s coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
ESPN Radio’s coverage will be spearheaded by American announcer JP Dellacamera, the primary play-by play announcer for the USA’s World Cup qualifying campaign. Dellacamera will be joined by color analyst Tommy Smyth, one of the longest serving soccer analysts in the U.S. Both announcers have a wealth of World Cup experience with Dellacamera announcing the previous six World Cups for various networks and Smyth has called 2,500 international and club matches with three World Cups to his name.
During the last stage of group play, matches will be played simultaneously. During this time Sirius/XM will devote an extra channel to World Cup coverage. ESPN Radio has not announced who will announce those matches.
“The anticipation for the World Cup has been building for four years and for soccer fans there is no bigger event,” said Scott Greenstein, SIRIUS XM’s President and Chief Content Officer. ”SIRIUS XM and its extensive array of channels will deliver every minute of every match, and ensure that fans can follow all the action involving every team from anywhere.”
This is great news for American fans with 9-5 office jobs. Many of the matches will be played during normal business hours, and it is much easier to listen to the radio covertly than watch matches on a computer. It’s also further evidence that the coverage of the tournament will be so immense, and access so that coverage so easily accessible, the World Cup will be unavoidable by Americans this summer.
Dear John,
Thank you for posting this.
Here’s the full press release…
http://www2.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=TVSPY_RAD.story&STORY=/www/story/05-19-2010/0005241884&EDATE=WED+May+19+2010,+10:00+AM
Bram
will espnradio online play the games via wifi stream?
They already have 2 espn radio stations on the network (ESPN Radio and Radio Xtra)….so what is the difference necessarily between them and the duplicate channels? More importantly, would BBC World Service Sat and Sun sportsworld broadcast matches live during their 2-3 hour blocks (which siriusxm subscribers would get to listen to)?
Hi, RedMD,
XM’s second ESPN channel is, indeed, called ESPN Xtra, but Sirius uses a different name for its channel, and typically offers a somewhat different slate of programming there.
I don’t know which channel would air “overflow” matches (such as the third round-robin group match when two {2} air simultaneously for each group), but, yeah, it’s entirely possible, I’d imagine, that that second channel would be where to find the second broadcast.
My guess is that BBC World Service would NOT air full games, just (at most) highlight snippets like in any sports report, because they don’t have rights for North America.
If you go to the BBC’s Website, I believe you’ll find that programming varies (and, even if the same program airs, scheduling could also vary) for BBC World Service by geographic area.
Hope this is insightful.
Bram
Are xm n sirious radio charging extra for this service, do we need to download any applications? Or else?
Dear lee (& Everyone),
From what I can determine…
This will be part of the regular XM service, BUT Sirius listeners would need to have the “Best of XM” package in order to get it. (In other words, it won’t be standard for both systems, only for XM.)
Check out http://www.xmradio.com/onxm/features/soccer.xmc or http://www.sirius.com/soccer for more information, including channel listings and game schedules.
Thanks,
Bram