ESPN announced last night that the NHL Big City Greens Classic would be returning for a second edition this spring. Debuting this past March, the Big City Greens Classic is an animated alt-cast that uses NHL Edge tracking data and the rendering engine of Sony’s Beyond Sports to recreate a Capitals-Rangers game in the world of the Disney cartoon. The first collaboration set an ESPN record for greatest proportion of total viewers opting for an alternate feed, while also skewing significantly younger and more female than traditional coverage.
ESPN EVP/Creative Studio & Marketing Tina Thornton shared the news from the stage of the ESPN Edge Conference at the network’s South Street Seaport studios. “We're excited to continue pushing that fan-facing opportunity forward,” she said. An exact date or game was not specified, only that it would be in 2024. More recently, ESPN collaborated with Beyond Sports and NFL Next Gen Stats .
“We're proud of what Edge and our partners have accomplished in the last couple of years,” ESPN Chair Jimmy Pitaro said in his opening remarks, “It's important work and innovative work. But we also know that we're just getting started over here.”
