In early April, SportTechie had the chance to take a walk around Nationals Park with ESPN coordinating producer Phil Orlins before a Sunday Night Baseball contest between the Nationals and the Mets. At the time, Orlins told ST how the network captured arguably the best moment from Spring Training: When a mic’d up Mookie Betts told gave his own play-by-play analysis as he tried to run down a hit. “I ain’t getting this one, boys.”
But Orlins talked about a lot more, too, including the direction ESPN’s coverage is going. Here’s everything else from that conversation that you need to know.
Inside the screen
You may have noticed ESPN baseball broadcasts have a quaint new graphics package this season—heavy on imagery of baseball cards and trademark memorabilia. Beyond that artwork, Orlins said the network has also rearranged the geometry of the screen. You’ll see replays of a home run in one box while watching the hitter cross the plate in another, and you’ll see more studio cut-ins between pitches instead of only between batters.
That might be a subtle difference that Joe Fan won’t notice, but the change shows ESPN is trying to deliver updates to viewers as fast as it can. There’s no need to wait for SportsCenter anymore.
According to Orlins, 97 to 98 percent of ESPN’s baseball audience is still watching on a linear platform. That means better accommodating mobile or online viewing isn’t yet a priority. Once that does become something worth addressing, Orlins said he’d be more concerned with what graphics, statistics, and information surrounds the viewing frame, rather than what’s inside it. He also said he’d be interested in what ESPN could accomplish with square or “portrait mode” formatting.
And when that time comes, don’t look for ESPN to follow Facebook’s logic on composition for MLB games. “There’s this thought out there that things should be gigantic because you’re watching on a small screen, but the other aspect to watching on a small screen is it’s always 18 inches away from your face,” Orlins said. “I don’t really have a hard time reading any of our graphics.”
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Inside K-Zone and Statcast
ESPN launched its 3D K-Zone in time for last season’s playoffs. The pitch tracking data for K-Zone comes from MLB’s Statcast, the same technology you’ve surely already seen tracking home runs, baserunner speeds, and distances to outfield catches.
Statcast is now the exclusive data provider for both ESPN’s K-Zone and other networks’ graphics as well. ESPN does not pay MLB in exchange for data access, but instead pays in-kind by promoting MLB’s partner, Amazon Web Services.
Statcast’s standalone system not only collects the data, but also converts it into the bright red and yellow trails and the diagrams that viewers see on many broadcasts. However, the translation of that data into the K-Zone graphics for ESPN is instead performed by SportsMEDIA Technology—a separate sports broadcast technology company. That detail might end up being important because of SMT’s pending lawsuit against MLB over patent infringement.
“It’s a long and complex history that goes back to us having initially developed K-Zone with Sportvision before they were bought out by SMT,” Orlins said. “We are contractually committed to SMT.”
While K-Zone currently illustrates the path of the ball, ESPN’s next iteration is likely to evaluate and measure pitch movement. “We are in an incredibly long and detailed discussion about trying to articulate that in ways that a TV viewer can understand,” Orlins said.
Overall, Orlins explained that there’s no more competitive broadcast landscape than ESPN’s weekday baseball coverage. On any given day the company is competing with eight other games in the same window just in the baseball category alone. The churn is high—and for a typical three-hour baseball game, Orlins said ESPN is only averaging 20 to 25 minutes of average watch time per viewer.