The lineup of live TV sports events taking place over the President’s Day weekend starts on the hardwood with TNT’s coverage of the NBA All-Star Weekend festivities.

On Saturday TNT will offer primetime coverage of the NBA All-Star Saturday Night events, including the skills, three-point and slam dunk contests. On Sunday night TNT and TBS will provide live coverage of the annual NBA All-Star Game, featuring the league's recently crowned all-time leading scorer LeBron James.  

On the race track, Fox will feature Sunday afternoon coverage of NASCAR’s Daytona 500 auto racing event. On the links, CBS and Golf Channel will offer weekend coverage of the PGA Genesis Invitational golf tournament. 

The men’s college basketball lineup of top-ranked teams playing on Saturday includes top-ranked Alabama meeting Georgia on the SEC Network, fourth-ranked UCLA battling California on the Pac-12 Network and fifth-ranked Kansas taking on ninth-ranked Baylor on ESPN. On Sunday, second-ranked Houston plays Memphis on ESPN, while third-ranked Purdue meets Ohio State on CBS.

Several of the top women’s college basketball teams play on Sunday, including top-ranked South Carolina meeting Ole Miss on SEC Network, second-ranked Indiana battling Purdue on BTN, and fifth-ranked LSU traveling to Florida on SEC Network.  On Monday, third-ranked Stanford plays No. 16 UCLA on ESPN2.

On the ice, ABC will televise the NHL's Stadium Series outdoor game between the Washington Capitals and the Carolina Hurricanes from Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

In the boxing ring, PPV.com on Saturday will distribute the BLK Prime-produced fight between former four-division champion Adrien Broner and Michael Williams Jr., while DAZN will distribute the WBA featherweight title bout between champion Leigh Wood and challenger Mauricio Lara.  

ESPN and ABC on Saturday will kickoff the inaugural season of the upstart XFL pro football league. ABC will offer the Vegas Vipers-Arlington Renegades game while ESPN and FX will simulcast the primetime matchup between the Orlando Guardians and the Houston Roughnecks. 

Also: Disney Looking to Expand XFL Sponsor Roster as Season Kicks Off

On Sunday, XFL game telecasts include the St. Louis Battlehawks-San Antonio Brahmas contest on ABC and the Seattle Sea Dragons-D.C. Defenders matchup on ESPN.■ 

NASCAR's return to the airwaves highlights a diverse lineup of live sports events scheduled for the three-day weekend.

NASCAR launched its 2021 Cup Series this week, leading up to Fox’s live coverage of Sunday's Daytona 500 event. On Saturday, FS1 offers live coverage of NASCAR’s Xfinity Series as well as the ACRA Menards Series Racing event.  

Also Read: Sports and OTT: Streaming Could Squeeze the Last Vestige of Appointment TV

The Tennis Channel and ESPN2 will take the courts to offer three-day weekend coverage of the Australian Open, pro tennis' first of four Grand Slam events in 2021. On the greens, Golf Channel and CBS will tag team to provide weekend coverage of the PGA Tour’s Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament. 

On the combat sports front, ESPN Plus will offer live coverage of the UFC 258 pay-per-view event on Saturday, headlined by the Kamaru Usman-Gilbert Burns welterweight championship fight.

ABC will continue its Saturday night primetime NBA coverage with the Brooklyn Nets-Golden State Warriors contest, while NBC will offer Valentine’s Day NHL coverage of the Washington Capitals-Pittsburgh Penguins game. 

Streaming service Peacock Premium will offer live weekend coverage of the 2021 Guinness Six Nations Championship Rugby tournament, while NBCSN provides live weekend coverage of four Premier League soccer contests.

Also Read: Six Nations Rugby on Peacock Premium. NBCSN

College basketball’s top-ranked team Gonzaga leads a heavy load of games over the holiday weekend. On Saturday, Gonzaga will travel to San Francisco to face the Dons on ESPN2, while fourth-ranked Ohio State hosts Indiana on ESPN, Fifth-ranked Villanova meets 19th-ranked Creighton on Fox and ninth-ranked Virginia plays North Carolina on ESPN. 

On Sunday, CBS will air the game between third-ranked Michigan and 21st-ranked Wisconsin. President’s Day will feature ninth-ranked Virginia against 17th ranked Florida State on ESPN.

Fox Sports is revving up virtual reality-facing initiatives at Sunday’s Daytona 500.

The network said Toyota has hopped on board to sponsor a set of VR elements for the race in partnership with Next VR, including a “broadcast-quality” live VR feed of the Daytona 500, which gets underway Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. That broadcast will be available for free via the NextVR portal. Additionally, Samsung Gear VR owners can access it by downloading the NextVR app on any Gear VR-compatible smartphone.

RELATED: Fox Sports Goes Full Throttle To Drive Viewers To 'Daytona Day'

Fox Sports, which just announced a new, five-year deal with NextVR, said it also plans to operate VR cameras situated on the track wall inside the “robo-cage,” within a pit stall, and as part of pre-recorded features from the garage, team hauler and television broadcast truck.

Coverage also includes multiple closed-circuit VR streams from  the speedway on Friday and Saturday, and a VR kiosk manned by Fox Sports and NextVR personnel at the Toyota Fan Injector stadium entrance area.

Fox’s Lab will also capture 360-degree video from a camera embedded in the No. 78 Furniture Row Toyota team of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Martin Turex Jr., which will be shared across multiple Fox Sports platforms.

“Virtual reality is the next great frontier in storytelling and we are thrilled that Toyota is working with us to bring this experience to race fans,” Eric Shanks, Fox Sports president, COO & executive producer, said in a statement.

Elsewhere on Daytona 500’s tech front, Arris said it will provide carrier-class WiFi to most popular fan locations at the speedway’s new motorsports stadium.

Daytona International Speedway, Arris said, is the first NASCAR racetrack to feature carrier-class WiFi.  Arris’s platform at DIS will use the Aptilo Service Management Platform, Benu Networks Mobile Edge Gateway, Ruckus ZoneFlex access points and virtual SmartZone WLAN controller, and Skyline Communications Dataminer  OSS platform.

Carrying the live stream of Fox’s coverage of this Sunday’s Daytona 500 won’t be a first for Fox Sports GO, but the programmer hopes the app's second go-round for the big race will steer in an even larger group of fans than it did last year.

Expectations are higher this year because more MVPDs now have TV Everywhere rights with Fox (the Fox Sports GO app is now available to about 60 million pay-TV homes), and the app itself is now offered on many more devices than it was at this time last year.

Update: DirecTV recently launched Fox Sports GO, which pushed the app's total distribution to 80 milion homes. 

“We have a much bigger audience that we’re going to be exposing this to,” Clark Pierce, senior vice president, mobile and advanced platforms for Fox Sports, said.

MVPD integrations with Fox Sports GO up since last year’s big race, but this year’s Daytona 500 will be the first in which the app is available on the popular Android platform for smartphones and tablets.

Fox Sports GO is also offered on iOS and Amazon Fire tablets and smartphones, select Windows devices, on the Web at FoxSportsGo.com, and, as of earlier this month, on the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. Fox launched the app in October 2013.

“I’m excited to see how we do with multiplatform distribution…and being on multiple operating systems,” Pierce said.  

As for the racing event itself, Pierce said Fox Sports GO will supplement the main live stream with other elements, including alternative video feeds originating from a number of in-car cameras.

While getting more MVPDs on board and more devices supported helps adoption, getting the word out still remains a huge key.

“A big thing for us is awareness right now…awareness of the product and awareness of the value that users get,” said Pierce, who sees TVE as an additive piece of the pay-TV ecosystem. Fox Networks, by the way, has been seeking out ways to build awareness for its TVE offerings, including a “Stream It and Dream It Sweepstakes" that ran its course last November.  

Fox Sports GO, he said, is getting some sizable usage from its coverage of NBA games. “We’ve been pleasantly surprised.”

Following a “living experiment” last year that was limited to a small number of markets and MVPD partners, the app’s in-market streaming for the current NBA season was rolled out with all of Fox’s 17 NBA team partners.

That in-market streaming capability represents one of the special challenges Fox Sports GO had to resolve behind the scenes and under the hood. The complexity of the app was amplified by the fact that it had to support 205 Fox affiliates, 22 regional sports and about a half dozen national cable channels.

Under the app’s technical and operational model, Fox affiliates maintain jurisdiction of their advertising inventories.  “They control it like they do with [traditional] linear TV,” the Fox Sports exec sad, noting that it’s their job to upload their own ads and promos.

From a broader perspective, “it’s a lot of channels, it’s a lot of content and it’s a lot of juggling,” Pierce explained. “Fox Sports GO is really a different product than other TV Everywhere apps.”