ESPN to Telecast Live Boxing in 3D from CES Show Floor

The advantageous timing of this season’s Allstate BCS National Championship with a later-than-usual January CES led to a “logical opportunity” for the network to build several events at the show around its 3D capabilities, Bryan Burns, ESPN vice president-strategic business planning, told Consumer Electronics Daily Wednesday. The network announced Monday plans for an invitation-only event at the Hilton Theater at CES, showing the BCS Championship game on Jan. 9 using RealD equipment and Marchon 3D glasses. Burns said he'll visit Las Vegas this week to do a site survey to determine the screen size and seating capacity of the space, which he estimated would accommodate “at least” 600 seats for the 3D showing.

ESPN will also show live boxing matches, sanctioned by the state of Nevada and produced by Top Rank Boxing, from a boxing ring set up in ESPN’s Central Hall exhibit space, Booth 13632, in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Burns said. The boxing matches will be “the real deal, no head gear” Burns said, and the matches will have to follow state boxing rules including having doctors and ambulances on site. The fight card will be announced in December, Burns said, but won’t include high-profile names. “We're not talking Oscar De La Hoya” or big-ticket names from pay-per-view boxing events, he said.

Also at the ESPN booth, which Burns pegged at roughly 50 by 70 feet, the network will telecast its first studio show in 3D. The 3D version of “SportsNation,” with Colin Crawford and Michelle Beadle, will run on ESPN 3D on Wed., Jan. 11, at 2 p.m. PST, according to the network.

ESPN will show the live events on 3D TVs in its booth, Burns said, but TV brands and sizes “are to be determined,” he said. The TVs will be passive models, which Burns said was “not a commentary on the technology, but in that environment I don’t think you could deal with emitters and things like that. If you have 500 people trying to watch 12 screens, emitters can’t work,” he said. “A living room is different."

The 3D feeds are likely to be available to TV manufacturers exhibiting at CES through a third-party vendor, Burns said. “It’s conceivable that anybody on the show floor could buy the feed,” he said. “We're not planning for that, but it wouldn’t surprise us."

Audio is one of several challenges presented by producing live shows from a convention show floor, Burns said. “It’s not a controlled environment,” he said. Tuesday, the first day of CES, “will be very interesting for us because only then will we know what’s around us” in terms of sound and sight lines, he said. In an arena, ESPN can put a camera 100 feet away “for a wide shot to go in and out with,” he said. At the Central Hall at CES, “You'd be in the middle of the Sony booth if you did that,” he said.

ESPN constructs square trusses for its traveling boxing show, “Friday Night Fights,” and will use the same type of setup for the CES matches, Burns said. The trusses have elements that support lights and a robotic camera, he said. The network is piggybacking on the CES investment by moving the rigging to the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas in time for “Friday Night Fights” that week, he said.