ESPN rolls out jock block entirely in Spanish

By Gabriel Spitzer

    Hispanics are huge fans of traditional American sports, such as football and baseball, but for years they got only part of the play. What they heard of the game was either in English or dubbed, often as SAP (Secondary Audio Programs).
    That all changed on April 1, when ESPN rolled out ESPN Deportes, which translates into "ESPN Sports," a four-to-six hour block of programming fed to affiliates for free each Sunday night. 
    The block includes ESPN’s "Sunday Night Baseball," "Sunday Night NFL" and a Spanish-language version of "SportsCenter."
    What makes Deportes unique is that for the first time Spanish speakers are able to watch baseball and football in entire Spanish-language productions. 
   That means Spanish announcers, commercials in Spanish and interviews with players in Spanish. 
    ESPN is offering Deportes to cable providers for free. They can then broadcast it on a cable-access channel or a local Spanish-language station. 
   The broadcast is already in 11 million homes, including many in major markets with large Hispanic populations like Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago and San Francisco.
    ESPN is also in talks with a number of major advertisers to sponsor the service. Valvoline is already onboard as a major sponsor. As with other ESPN programs, local affiliates will be given two minutes of ad time per hour to sell.
    Buyers who work in Hispanic media have been quick to embrace the idea.
    "I think it’s great. I commend them for doing it right," says Monica Gadsby, senior vice president, director of Hispanic Media at Starcom Worldwide.
    "All of the traditional English-language market networks are struggling with how to reach a Hispanic audience, and there’s been a lot of controversy about using the SAP system, which I find to be not quite as relevant. It loses that original flavor."
    SAP is widely regarded as a step in the right direction but not adequate to meet the demand of the Hispanic sports audience.
    "The difference between Deportes and SAP is that here the content is created in their language," says Angelica Garcia, media planning supervisor at La Agencia de Orci in Los Angeles.
    "The journalists are doing the interviews in Spanish. Some sports personalities, like a lot of baseball players, will be more comfortable talking in Spanish. The intention, the flavor, is Spanish."
    Mainstream media have typically associated Hispanic sports fans with boxing and soccer. Baseball, football and basketball are rarely broadcast in Spanish, even though there is much evidence of huge Hispanic demand for these sports.
     "I think that as you start taking a deeper dive into the current Nielsen measurements and look at what some of the more general-market sports have been delivering among Hispanics, especially Hispanic males, a lot of marketers are surprised that the numbers are actually pretty strong," says Gadsby.
    "Hispanic males especially are very passionate about sports. If English-language television generally under-delivers to Hispanics by a 50 or 60 percent margin, the under-delivery for sports is not quite as severe. There’s enough data in the marketplace to show that the interest is there."
    According to a survey conducted by ESPN Sports, over 80 percent of Hispanic males age 12 and up are NFL football fans. Boxing is next with about 77 percent, followed by the NBA and Major League Baseball with about 72 percent apiece.
    ESPN’s survey places professional soccer eighth among the Hispanic males’ favorite sports, but the survey question was limited to the American Major League Soccer. In actuality, soccer is probably the number-one sport favored by Hispanic males.
    "It didn’t include international soccer; soccer is bigger than just MLS," says Garcia.
    Still, buyers do have a few concerns about ESPN Deportes.
    "Hopefully, the execution will be as smooth as the concept, in terms of the different operators making the channel available. In addition to promoting it on ESPN, they’re going to advertise on radio and print in each market. If they do that right, they could get a large audience," says Starcom’s Gadsby.
    Promotion’s the thing for Garcia as well.
    "Our only worry is that it’s not on a new network; it’s just a block of programming, so the cable systems are responsible for promoting it. That’s my big concern: how the Spanish-speaking sports fan is going to find out about it," she says.
    Also, because the programming will be on different stations in different markets, there is no plan in place to measure the viewership. That could prove problematic as ESPN tries to recruit advertisers.
     "We like to have accountability, to know that it’s delivering the audience we think it is. In the short term that’s a handicap. Hopefully, the success will be good enough in the long term that they’ll put something in place, even if it’s a specially commissioned study from Nielsen, so we’ll have something to prove the numbers are there," says Gadsby.

April 18, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.

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