MORE TV COVERAGE OF SOFTBALL
2008-09-11

Over the next two days, Sky Television viewers will have an opportunity to watch highlights from the final day of July’s 6th European Coed Slowpitch Championship. The network’s SportNation program will air two different shows over the course of tomorrow and Saturday.

One program will have around 35 minutes of highlights from the first three Page Playoff games that took place in Southampton, England: Great Britain versus the Czech Republic, Ireland vs. Jersey, and Ireland vs. the Czech Republic. Program 2 will have about 24 minutes of highlights from the Grand Final between Great Britain and Ireland.

Here are the transmission dates, times, and channels for each programme:

In addition to what’s to come, the event had garnered media attention as it was going on.

The Championship finals day was enhanced by online text commentary so that fans around the world could keep up-to-date with the scores. The BackSoftball campaign was also featured on BBC One and BBC World television as well as on the BBC website.

Another event in that part of the world gained significant media attention as well.

From July 28-August 2 the European Championship Men “A” took place in Denmark. Eight countries participated in the men’s fast pitch tournament that also served as a qualifier for the ISF XII Men’s World Championship in 2009.

TV2 is the biggest national television channel in Denmark, and their sports program TV2 Sporten did two separate stories during the championship week. TV2 also has a sub-channel, the 24-hour news channel TV2 News, which aired short clips live from the championship game – combined with interviews where the game was going on in the background.

DR, the other big national television channel in that country, also did a story on the European Championship and Denmark’s great potential in the tournament.

And, the television channel dk4 was on-site during the last two days of the event, preparing a 25-30 minute special program on the softball championship and the Danish national team, with a September air date expected. During the tournament, however, they were also active in posting news about and pictures from the championship on the homepage of their website.

As has recently been reported, during the Games last month in Beijing softball also garnered huge television ratings for the NHK-Japan Broadcasting Corporation, who confirmed that its ratings for the women’s Olympic softball gold medal game were the highest during the entire Olympics with the exception of the Opening Ceremony.

The average viewing figures during the game were 30.6%, reaching a peak of 47.7% in the latter stages, as Japan beat Team USA, the tournament favorites.

Softball’s popularity keeps climbing and the world is watching!