FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 23, 2006

GLOBAL TV EXPOSURE FOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
Over 20 Games to be Televised from New Olympic Facility

Significant television coverage will take place during the International Softball Federation’s (ISF) XI Women’s World Championship, which gets underway this coming Sunday in China. The August 27-September 5 championship will also be softball’s Olympic Test Event. In addition, the tournament will qualify four teams for the 2008 Olympic Softball competition.

China Central Television will serve as the host broadcaster, and has plans to do a minimum of 26 games, at least nine of which will be shown throughout their country. Dentsu Inc. has signed on for the broadcast rights within Japan, where all seven of the Japanese team’s round robin games, plus coverage of September 3-5 playoff and medal games will be carried by Nippon TV.

Justin Kutcher will do the play-by-play of the televised games, and former Olympic Softball gold medalist Michele Smith will provide color commentary on some of the broadcasts.

NASN, which supplies Europe and the British Isles, will tape-delay a minimum of six games. And, the European Broadcast Union has been making contact with its 530-plus members worldwide about the availability of the broadcasts, which will originate from the new stadium in Beijing that has been built for the 2008 Games. The ISF event will be the first in the venue.

“We are extremely pleased to see the amount of television interest in our women’s world championship,” said ISF President Don Porter. “We have worked hard over the last few years to ensure that softball is TV-friendly, such as the 20-second clock we implemented, which is another contributor to helping keep game times under two hours, and the action on the field will certainly reflect not only the technical and rules aspects that we’ve worked on, but the elite level of play that these athletes train so hard to achieve.”

Mr. Porter pointed out that today’s announcement continues a trend for this marquee ISF event. “We had TV coverage of the last women’s world championship (2002) in 80 countries, and before that there was well over 100 hours of broadcasting (for the 1998 event). Even as far back as 1994 we had 38 million people watch the gold medal game on TV,” he said.

The following 16 countries will be competing in the world championship: Australia, Botswana, Canada, China, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, DPR Korea, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, USA, and Venezuela.

The TV games are noted in bold on the schedule posted here.

Visit the official 2006 ISF Women’s World Championship website at www.2006softball.org.

 

The ISF is the world governing body of the sport as recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF). Softball (women's fast pitch) made its Olympic debut at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. There are 130 affiliated countries in the ISF and millions of participants in the sport worldwide.

For more information, please contact ISF Director of Communications Bruce Wawrzyniak at brucew@internationalsoftball.com or (813) 864-0100, ext. 229.