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MLB Media Notes: ESPN Sunday Night Opener Down From '15, But Second Best Since '10

ESPN drew 2.9 million viewers for the Mets-Royals "Sunday Night Baseball" matchup, according to fast-national data. That figure is down from 3.4 million viewers for Cardinals-Cubs on ESPN2 last year, but still the second-best Sunday night opener since '10, when ESPN2 began the season with a Yankees-Red Sox game. Dodgers-Pirates on ESPN in '14 drew 2.3 million viewers (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).

SPEAK NO EVIL: In N.Y., Bob Raissman notes as Mets P Matt Harvey walked off the mound Sunday night, ESPN "had not touched" his self-imposed media boycott following news of a blood clot in his bladder. Raissman: "Not its pregame crew. Not its game announcers." Harvey’s "over-reaction to the media was not only newsworthy, it would have made for interesting conversation." Maybe ESPN "didn’t think this Harvey media flap story played outside" the N.Y. market (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 4/5). 

TAKE YOUR SEAT
: RE/CODE's Ina Fried noted eBay last week made its "small foray into the VR arena." StubHub, the company's subsidiary, is giving ticket buyers the "option to get an immersive, 3-D view of available seats" at arenas and ballparks such as AT&T Park in S.F. The experience "will work from within the existing StubHub apps for iOS and Android." Customers "will have the option of either using a smartphone or tablet and rotating it around to see different views, or popping their phone into a VR headset like Google Cardboard or Gear VR for a more immersive view" (RECODE.net, 3/31).

EXTRA PAD-DING: MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said approving the use of iPads in dugouts “was a recognition of reality." He said, "We were sitting around last year and we watched managers and coaches go into the dugouts with three-inch notebooks full of information. They were doing that because we had a rule that prohibited electronic devices in the dugout. Given that they were using all this information all the time anyways, it seemed that the visual of having an iPad out there, making the game consonant with the way the rest of us live was a change that was worth making” (“Closing Bell,” CNBC, 4/4).

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

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