EPSN has become a strange beast over the past few years. The network that is best known for Sports Center is expanding once again into drone racing coverage. Don’t know what drone racing is? Well, don’t worry because even people that are really into drones don’t even know what drone racing is. If we we are looking at a persons lifetime, drone racing would be the doctor midway through pulling someone out from their mother.
I always find it funny wen ESPN announces coverage of something other than traditional sports. We have had spellings bee’s, Magic the Gathering tournaments, and all manner of eSports run on the network in the past several years. This is really strange when the president of the network, John Skipper was quoted at a Code/Media series saying about eSports that,
“It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition….Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports,
So you can imagine the chuckle I get every time ESPN begins airing new content aimed at people, well, nothing like John Skipper. This time the network is experimenting with covering drone racing “competitions” with a new series that begins on October 23rd. The network has secured a multi-year deal with the Drone Racing League (DRL) to cover the competitive series over the course of ten episodes that will culminate at the DRL World Championships on November 20th.
The thing about drones is that they are a lot of fun to fly around, but not so much fun watching others do it. You can check out the video below that tries to get people really excited for the upcoming 2016 season, but it’s really hard for me to get past all the silly gimmicks, smoke machines, and forced drama. All I do know is that somewhere right John Skipper is silently screaming into his pillow.
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