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the
manager
WINTER 2011
“You’re always looking to see if
you can make your next programme
better than your last one,” he says. “If
you can do that, the years look after
themselves. We need to be thinking,
how can we explain tactics better,
explain positional sense better… how
can we bring fans closer to the things
they want to see.”
Among those things are the
protagonists themselves, the players,
and so access to the teams is a
particular priority for ESPN.
“We do our FA Cup presentation
from pitch side, and we have the
managers sit at our table, post-match,
to speak about the game,” Hornett
points out. “That’s a terrific insight,
for fans to be able to see a winning
manager talk about what’s happened
in the game and explain it.”
ESPN also aims to break new
ground with its development and
use of technology, the watchword
in sports broadcasting. But Hornett
is keen to impress that technology
must serve the coverage rather than
drive it. “I’m quite childish in the way
that I love new technology,” he says.
“But you have to be very careful what
you’re using it for, so we’re specifically
looking to use it to tell the story,
or to better explain the game. It’s
trying to go deeper than people
have done before.”
ESPN’s latest innovation is the
ESPN Arena, a giant ‘touch screen’
table that allows presenters to show
player movement in a virtual setting.
“A lot of the drive comes from the
former players and former managers
who come on the show, so we’re
continually developing technology in
order to suit them,” Hornett explains.
“We can fly around to another angle,
for example, analyse it from a different
perspective and give a different view
of what happened.”
3D is on the agenda, but it may
take some time, while goal-line
technology is something that Hornett
admits interests him as a fan. “There’s
resistance and those who favour it, but
the technology is there,” he says.
Football, of course, is not the only
sport that ESPN has to offer. The
channel has also become the UK’s
biggest broadcaster of domestic rugby
and there is a continuing desire to step
up the channel’s ambitions further,
but Hornett is not getting carried
away just yet.
“If you love sport, which we do,
you’re going to be interested in
everything that becomes available.
But the decision to what you buy
or don’t buy has to be made with a
sensible hat on. So I would say that
we’re interested in almost every sport,
but it has to make financial sense for
us to go after it.”
ESPN Arena
Unveiled in October 2011, the ‘ESPN Arena’ is a table-top pitch with
computer-generated players. The first of its kind in the world, it combines a
65-inch touch-screen table with graphics technology that feeds in digitally
rendered players, allowing the presenters to drag markers across the
screen and show the players taking up their formation, running about and
marking each other in ‘augmented reality’ set pieces. The presenters can
also make the players spring off the table and stand life-size in the studio,
while the table can generate 3D models of a club’s stadium. In the future,
ESPN plans to feed in further data, showing the two teams’ possession and
pitch position statistics.
about Andrew
Hornett
Andrew Hornett, 43, has been
senior executive producer with
ESPN UK since its launch in 2009.
Before taking up his current role,
Hornett worked for Sky Sports
(where he created the hugely
successful
Soccer Saturday
),
Setanta and in the independent
production sector.