 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Sportspromoter |
| Predecessor | Creative Sports Ohlmeyer Communications Corporation ESPN Plus ESPN Regional Television |
| Founded | 1996; 29 years ago (1996) |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Clint Overby (vice president)[1] |
| Owners | The Walt Disney Company (80%) Hearst Communications (20%) |
| Parent | ESPN Inc. |
| Website | www.ESPNEvents.com |
ESPN Events is an American multinational sportingevent promoter owned byESPN Inc. It is headquartered inCharlotte, North Carolina, and shares its operations withSEC Network and formerly withESPNU. The corporation organizes sporting events for broadcast across the ESPN family of networks, including, most prominently, a group ofcollege footballbowl games and in-seasoncollege basketball tournaments.
ESPN Events previously operated primarily as asyndicator of college sports broadcasts; the company was founded as Creative Sports, a sports programming syndicator that merged withDon Ohlmeyer's OCC Sports in 1996. After ESPN purchased the merged company, the division was renamedESPN Regional Television (ERT), which distributed telecasts for syndication onbroadcast stations andregional sports networks; these telecasts were also available on theESPN GamePlan andESPN Full Courtout-of-market sports packages. Most of ERT's broadcasts were presented under the on-air brandingESPN Plus (not to be confused withESPN+, 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 renamedSEC TV as to not be confused with the then-upcoming SEC Network cable channel).
Following its acquisition of theLas 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 forbowl-eligible teams. ESPN Events also organizes several pre-season tournaments in college basketball, as well as the season-openingCamping World Kickoff andTexas Kickoff football games. All ESPN Events are broadcast by ESPN's networks.[2]
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 ownESPN3 and ESPN+ platforms) took over most of the conference rights and overflow formerly held by the company.
The company traces its history to Creative Sports, Inc., aNorth Carolina-based sports syndicator owned and founded byBray Cary.ESPN Inc. purchased Creative Sports, Inc. and OCC Sports, Inc. in the mid-1990s.[3]
On July 22, 1994, ESPN Regional Television was incorporated inDelaware.[4] ESPN Regional Television was formed in 1996, through ESPN Inc.'s combination of Creative Sports and OCC Sports, under the direction of Chuck Gerber and Loren Matthews.[3] In January 2000, Loren Matthews left ESPN Regional Television for an executive position at sister divisionABC Sports. By February 2000, ERT acquired the production rights to theArena Football League; this included responsibilities for AFL broadcasts onThe Nashville Network, which had ESPN retain duties for the events in lieu of its own unit, World Sports Enterprises.[3]
In 2001, ESPN Regional Television moved beyond broadcastingcollege footballbowl games, when it purchased theLas Vegas Bowl fromLas Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. ESPN Regional did so to help partner conferences that had bowl qualified teams but no bowl available. The company bought four more bowls and started two others.[5]
In August 2008, ESPN reached a 15-year, $2.25 billion broadcast rights agreement with theSEC. As part of the deal, ESPN also assumed the syndicated package of games previously held byRaycom Sports; beginning in 2009, ERT syndicated SEC football and basketball under theSEC Network brand.[6][7]
The original business of ESPN Regional Television began to grow obsolete with the launch of dedicated networks dedicated to specific conferences, including theBig Ten Network,Pac-12 Network, and the ESPN-operatedSEC Network, since they largely assumed rights to the game packages that ESPN had previously syndicated. As such, the division pivoted to focusing solely on organizing events, particularly within college football and basketball.[8]
Derzis retired in 2021,[9] and the division is led by vice president Clint Overby.[10]
ESPN Plus used to hold the rights toConference USA football and basketball,Mountain West Conference football and basketball,Big Ten Conference football and basketball, and various other collegiate conferences, but has lost them as detailed below:
 | This section needs to beupdated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(December 2020) |
ERT acquired its first bowl game in 2001, with its purchase of the Las Vegas Bowl from theLas Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The company moved into the area as it saw that some of their conference partners had teams that werebowl-eligible, but with no bowl available to take them. By 2013, ERT had founded two new bowl games and purchased four additional games.[5] The games primarily serve as a source of live content for ESPN during the early weeks of bowl season, prior to the larger, traditional games in proximity toNew Year's Day (such as theNew Year's Six games of theCollege Football Playoff, which are also broadcast by ESPN). This strategy has been successful for ESPN, although it has in recent years contributed to an oversaturation of bowl games that have prevented them from all being populated by bowl-eligible teams. ESPN also runs theCelebration Bowl inDivision I FCS, which is played between the champions of theMid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and theSouthwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) — the two prominent conferences ofhistorically black colleges and universities.[19][8]
ESPN Events operates the following 17 bowl games, which ESPN televises:[20]
ESPN Events also organizes several opening weekend games, such as theCamping World Kickoff,Advocare Texas Kickoff, andFCS Kickoff.[8]
ESPN Events is also involved in college basketball, operating early-season events such as theAdvoCare Invitational, theChampions Classic, theJimmy V Classic, theNIT Season Tip-Off, and thePhil Knight Invitational.[22][8]
The company's success with college tournament operation and broadcasting led ESPN Regional Television to form a college marketing division, which provides colleges all-in-one services for selling sponsorships, local media rights and other marketing campaigns. TheUniversity of South Florida, theUniversity of Kansas and theUniversity of Oregon are some of the clients that the division began representing in 2000.[3]
The SERVPRO First Responder Bowl is one of 17 bowl games owned and operated by ESPN Events.
| Preceded by | Syndication Rights Holder to theBig 12 Conference 1996–2014 (underBig 12 Network branding, 2008–2014) | Succeeded by ESPN networks |
| Preceded by | Syndication Rights Holder to theBig Ten Conference 1996–2007 | Succeeded by Big Ten Network (cable-exclusive) |
| Preceded by | Syndication Rights Holder to theConference USA 1996–2014 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Syndication Rights Holder to theSoutheastern Conference 2009–2014 (underSEC TV branding) | Succeeded by SEC Network (cable-only) |
| Executives |  | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. networks |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| International |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Ventures | |||||||||||||||||||
| Defunct ventures |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Sports broadcasting rights | |||||||||||||||||||
| Other properties |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Notable personalities | |||||||||||||||||||
| Miscellaneous | |||||||||||||||||||
Owners:Walt Disney Company (80%);Hearst Communications (20%) | |||||||||||||||||||
