- published: 25 Apr 2011
- views: 217074
ESPN Events (formerly ESPN Regional Television, ESPN Regional, and until 2008, ESPN Plus) is an American college football regional bowl game planning division and formerly a sports programming syndicator that is owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between the Disney–ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and the Hearst Corporation (which owns the remaining 20%).
ESPN Events is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, sharing its operations with sister network ESPNU. Prior to its purchase by ESPN, the company was known as Creative Sports, which in turn merged with Don Ohlmeyer's Ohlmeyer Communications Corporation Sports (OCC Sports). The corporation organizes sporting events for broadcast across the ESPN family of networks, including, most prominently, a group of college football bowl games.
Most of ESPN's syndicated broadcasts had been previously presented under the on-air name ESPN Plus. However, the brand has since been phased out from its productions in favor of conference brands, such as SEC TV and the Big 12 Network. The unit produced sporting events for syndication on broadcast stations, regional sports networks; these telecasts were also available on the ESPN GamePlan and ESPN Full Court out-of-market sports packages until they were merged and unified into ESPN College Extra in 2015, and from 2007 to 2015, on WatchESPN.
ESPN (originally an acronym for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is a U.S.-based global cable and satellite television channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which operates the network) and the Hearst Corporation (which owns a 20% minority share).
ESPN broadcasts primarily from studio facilities located in Bristol, Connecticut. The network also operates offices in Miami, New York City, Seattle, Charlotte, and Los Angeles. John Skipper currently serves as president of ESPN, a position he has held since January 1, 2012. While ESPN is one of the most successful sports networks, there has been much criticism of ESPN, which includes accusations of biased coverage,conflict of interest, and controversies with individual broadcasters and analysts.
As of February 2015, ESPN is available to approximately 94,396,000 paid television households (81.1% of households with at least one television set) in the United States. In addition to the flagship channel and its seven related channels in the United States, ESPN broadcasts in more than 200 countries, operating regional channels in Australia, Brazil, Latin America and the United Kingdom, and owning a 20% interest in The Sports Network (TSN) as well as its five sister networks and NHL Network in Canada.
Plus may refer to: