ESPN caters to soccer fans with debut of World Cup coverage

A different kind of ‘football’ on ESPN

NEW YORK — For once, the word “football” on ESPN didn’t involve crunching tackles or punt returns.

ESPN debuted its 2010 World Cup coverage on Friday, giving the quadrennial soccer tournament a higher profile on American television than it ever has before and depending on viewers to understand what they were seeing. The first match, between Mexico and host country South Africa, started slow but gained steam and ended in a 1-1 tie.

The network won U.S. rights to televise all the games for the first time without having to deal with an intermediary, sharing the matches with Univision for the Spanish-speaking market. ESPN believes that establishing credibility as a soccer network is key to expansion plans, particularly in overseas markets.

So when play-by-play announcer Martin Tyler described something “in pure footballing terms” early in the first game, there was no attempt to Americanize his call. Football is what the rest of the world calls soccer. In this case, ESPN is eager to join the rest of the world.

Tyler’s hiring is another example. He’s among the best-known soccer announcers in the world, working for Sky Sports in Britain covering the pro leagues there. Since Sky Sports doesn’t have the World Cup rights, he’s a free agent for the tournament. Tyler has covered the World Cup for Australian TV the past few tournaments, but ESPN grabbed him this time.

Tyler will work the tournament’s biggest matches. He was paired in the booth Friday with Efan Ekoku, a former pro player in Britain who appeared in the 1994 World Cup for Nigeria.

Four years ago, ESPN televised some of the World Cup games with announcers working in a Connecticut studio and used an American, Dave O’Brien, as its lead announcer. Yet its testing found that rabid soccer fans preferred to hear the more experienced overseas announcers while casual fans didn’t really care. Most of the announcers ESPN hired this time are non-Americans.

It made for some sharp observations that less experienced announcers might have missed.

Toward the end of the first half, a South African player attempted to use his head to deflect a pass into the Mexican goal but came up just short. Ekoku used a slow-motion replay to show that if the player gave slightly more effort, if he left his feet to fling his body at the ball, the South Africans would likely have scored.

Another South African shot late in the game hit a goalpost, and Ekoku sensed its importance.

“What a glorious chance,” he said. “The match was there for the taking.”

The broadcasters’ experience wasn’t used to help viewers in the first half, when a Mexican player’s goal was disallowed by a referee’s offsides call.

“What an awful decision,” Ekoku said.

He didn’t explain why, however, assuming his audience clearly understood rules about where players need to stand. Because ESPN was taking a worldwide feed of the game’s video, it couldn’t make its own production decisions — so after one, quick, inconclusive replay the play was largely gone and many viewers were left baffled about what actually happened.

ESPN had some minor production glitches during the opening ceremonies, with brief trouble making contact with some of its announcers and rolling pre-taped reports. On “Sportscenter” after the first game, the network confused the “RSA” abbreviation (for Republic of South Africa) to mistakenly say in an onscreen graphic that Mexico had played Russia in its first game.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects spelling of commentators name to Ekoku, sted Okoku. CLARIFIES 3d graf that ESPN has broadcast rights without having to deal with an intermediary. Moving on sports and entertainment services.)