The UEFA Euro 2024 soccer tournament Round of 16 and ESPN’s UFC 303 mixed martial arts pay-per-view event highlight the live televised sports events airing during the last weekend of June.  

FS1on Saturday will televise UEFA Euro 2024 matches between Switzerland and Italy, and Germany and Denmark. On Sunday, Fox will cover the England-Slovakia and Spain-Georgia matches. 

In the NWSL on Saturday, ESPN will televise the Bay FC-Racing Louisville FC game while Ion airs the Washington Spirit-North Carolina Courage and Utah Royals-Portland Thorns FC matches. 

In the octagon, ESPN will distribute the UFC 303 pay-per-view event featuring the Alex Pereira-Jiri Prochazka light heavyweight championship rematch bout. Pereira defeated Prochazka in UFC 295 this past November. In the boxing ring, ESPN on Saturday will air the junior welterweight title fight between titleholder Teofimo Lopez and Steve Claggett, while DAZN streams the WBC junior bantamweight title bout between champion Juan Francisco Estrada and Jesse Rodriguez. 

In golf, CBS and Golf Channel will offer weekend coverage of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, and NBC and Golf Channel will televise the US Senior Open. 

ABC will offer weekend coverage of the X Games from Ventura, Calif. On the baseball field, Roku Tv will stream a Sunday morning matchup between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves, while ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball telecast will feature the World Series Champion Texas Rangers and the Baltimore Orioles.

On the basketball court, ESPN on Sunday will air a WNBA doubleheader featuring the Atlanta Dream-New York Liberty and Indiana Fever-Phoenix Mercury matchups. 

This weekend’s lineup of live sports events begins on the soccer field with the National Women's Soccer League championship game.

CBS on Saturday will televise the title game between the OL Reign and Gotham FC. The game, which will serve as OL Reign star and Women's World Cup winner Megan Rapinoe's final game before retiring, comes on the heels of a new NWSL media deal with CBS, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps Sports.

Also in soccer, ESPN2 on Saturday will feature the United Soccer League championship game, while NBC, Peacock and USA Network will offer weekend coverage of Premier League games.

NFL Network will televise the Indianapolis Colts-New England Patriots game from Germany, the second straight week the network has aired an overseas game following last week’s Miami Dolphins-Kansas City Chiefs game. 

Also Sunday, CBS and Fox will air regional NFL coverage, while NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecast features the New York Jets and Las Vegas Raiders. 

In the octagon, ESPN will distribute the UFC 295 pay-per-view fight card featuring former heavyweight champion Jiri Prochakzka and former middleweight champion Alex Pereira. 

In college football, top-ranked Ohio State hosts Michigan State on NBC, second-ranked Georgia battles No. 9 Ole Miss on ESPN, third-ranked Michigan travels to meet No. 10 Penn State on Fox, fourth-ranked Florida State faces Miami on ABC, and fifth-ranked Washington takes on Utah on Fox. 

Other games on the schedule include No. 6 Oregon-USC (Fox), No. 7 Texas-TCU (ABC), and No. 8 Alabama-Kentucky (ESPN).  

 The Angel City Football Club’s inaugural season in the National Women’s Soccer League is the subject of a new HBO sports documentary series debuting May 16.

The three-part series, Angel City, goes behind the scenes of the groundbreaking Los Angeles-based pro soccer team founded by actor Natalie Portman, venture capitalist Kara Northman and gaming entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, said HBO. 

The series candidly reveals the effort to build the franchise – which features the largest majority female ownership group in professional sports – from scratch in preparation for its 2022 NWSL season. The show looks at the club’s task of securing players and coaching staff along with drawing in fans as it deals with the growing pains of a startup, said HBO officials.

Angel City is executive produced by Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Anna Barnes, Natalie Portman, Sophie Mas and Christine O’Malley.

The March Madness college basketball tournament enters its elite-eight round this weekend as part of the busy lineup of live sports events airing on broadcast and cable networks.

The NCAA Men’s college basketball tournament action begins Saturday on TBS with Fla. Atlantic facing Kansas State and UConn battling Gonzaga. Sunday’s action will pit the winners of Friday night’s San Diego State-Alabama and Princeton-Creighton  games in one elite eight matchup, and the winners of the Miami-Houston and Xavier-Texas games in the other contest.

In other sports, Showtime on Saturday will offer a pay-per-view boxing fight card featuring the super middleweight bout between David Benavidez and Caleb Plant. In the octagon, ESPN will air a Saturday afternoon UFC Fight Night card featuring a main event bout between bantamweights Marlon Vera and Cory Sandhagen. 

On the racetrack, Fox on Sunday will televise the NASCAR Cup EchoPark Grand Prix auto racing event. On the ice, ABC on Saturday will televise live the Washington Capitals-Pittsburgh Penguins NHL game.

On the football field, the XFL enters week six with three games, including ABC’s Saturday Seattle Sea Dragons-Orlando Guardians and Sunday San Antonio Brahmas-Arlington Renegades telecasts, as well as FX’s Saturday St. Louis Battlehawks-Vegas Vipers game. 

The National Women’s Soccer League kicks off its 2023 season Saturday on CBSSN, which will air the Chicago Red Stars-San Diego Wave FC. ■ 

This weekend’s live Tv sports action starts on the football field as nine of the NCAA's top 10-ranked college football teams play on Saturday.

Top ranked Georgia will look to maintain its undefeated season when it takes on the Tennessee Volunteers on CBS, while second-ranked Alabama takes on New Mexico State on the SEC Network. Third rank Oregon hits the road to play Washington State on ESPN, while fourth-ranked Ohio State travels to play No. 19 Purdue on ABC. 

The remaining schedule includes No. 6 Michigan-Penn State (ABC), No. 7 Michigan State-Maryland (Fox), No. 8 Oklahoma-No. 13 Baylor (Fox), No. 9 Notre Dame-Virginia (ABC) and No. 10 Oklahoma State-TCU (Fox).

The 10th weekend of NFL action kicks off with Sunday afternoon regional action on Fox and CBS, followed by NBC’s Sunday Night Football matchup between AFC West rivals the Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders. 

On the combat sports front, Showtime Saturday night will distribute a super middleweight bout between David Benavidez and Kyrone Davis. Also Saturday, DAZN will offer a featherweight title fight between champion Kid Galahad and challenger Kiko Martinez. ESPN Plus will deliver a Saturday afternoon UFC Fight Night card that includes a main event bout between featherweights Max Holloway and Yair Rodriquez. 

On the soccer field, the National Women’s Soccer League will continue its postseason run with two semifinal matches on CBSSN, including the Washington-OL Reign and Chicago-Portland games.   

In the 75th minute of the National Women’s Soccer League’s June 27 Challenge Cup match, North Carolina Courage forward Debinha scored a header into the Portland Thorns FC goal to the excited roar of the crowd heard live on CBS. But there were no fans at Zions Bank Stadium in Herriman, Utah, where the game was played: Producers and the league added crowd noise to provide more ambiance to what was the first U.S. pro game played since the coronavirus sidelined the sports world in March. 

Since then, Major League Soccer and the National Premier Soccer League (U.S.) have joined NASCAR and some other motorsports; pro boxing; mixed martial arts outfit UFC and other sports, including golf, in returning to live action, albeit with restrictions that have forced networks to drastically alter how they produce and televise live sports to anxious fans. Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League are hopeful they can follow their lead and relaunch later this month.

“Every sport, and the scale of that sport, demands a different way of thinking,” Fox Sports senior VP of field & technical operations Michael Davies said. “But it’s all for the same goal: to keep people safe and to keep the virus from spreading or impacting what you’ve already started.” 

RELATED: Bubble Life in Las Vegas

TV sports producers have responded with innovative approaches to producing live telecasts during the pandemic, maintaining a delicate balance between delivering high-quality, entertaining telecasts while keeping production staff safe.  

“At first it was a challenge, but we said, let’s open up our eyes and embrace this and use the technology out there to be more remote in how we produce events,” CBS Sports executive producer and senior VP production Harold Bryant said.  

COVID-19 has altered and continues to alter the playing field of professional sports. Most events are being conducted without crowds to limit potential virus spread, and network production executives have said they must produce games with sometimes less than half of the typical complement of on-site production personnel. 

“We’ve basically been able to reduce our footprint personnel-wise almost in half on a golf event on site,” Bryant said. “If we do a golf event from Ohio, for example, we have [production] people in Stamford [Connecticut], New York, Burbank [California], New Zealand and Houston. What this has done is advanced our use of technology and remote production.”

Production Moves Off-Site

Fox Sports’ Davies said that the network was able to move a fair amount of on-site production for NASCAR coverage, which restarted in May, to its Los Angeles  pro­duction facilities to limit the amount of producers at the track.

“People were controlling machines that were [at the venue], so that limited the amount of people that needed to travel,” he said. “We were already working on that, but certainly COVID has accelerated that.”  

Networks have had to come up with creative ways to use robotic cameras and drones to replace camera people. ESPN is looking to provide unique camera angles and enhanced technology for its MLS and NBA coverage, VP of event and studio production Stephanie Druley said in a July 7 interview posted to ESPN’s press site. 

“We will have the ability to use drones at MLS and for NBA exterior shots,” Druley said. “The NBA production team will have rail cameras at each venue and access to Second Spectrum [machine learning-based video tracking] elements, among other technologies. For safety reasons, we will also utilize an unusual number of robotic cameras for both sports.”

Along with the challenges of placing personnel at the venues, executives said they also have to prepare for a glut of sports events as sports organizations attempt to make up for lost time. 

On July 4, for instance, IndyCar and NASCAR both presented races from the same track, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The historic happening forced NBC to juggle limited production crews across two different races running back-to back, according to NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood. 

NBC produced the first race, the IndyCar GMR Grand Prix, from a production truck in the infield, then switched its signal to a production truck in Charlotte, North Carolina, to produce the NASCAR Xfinity Series Pennzoil 150 at the Brickyard race immediately afterwards. 

“It is complex to bring back the number of cameras we brought to Indianapolis back to Charlotte and then to make them all work,” Flood said. “You have to become more creative. It’s a fascinating process, and it has forced everyone to step back and think differently.”

ESPN has had to juggle multiple UFC and boxing fight cards over the past couple of months while attempting to maintain a virus-free environment for its production staff. The network’s summer boxing series, in particular, has been challenging (see sidebar). More than 40 ESPN production and camera crew staff lived in a virtual bubble within the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, as the network produced more than 50 fights over a five-week period ending July 21, according to ESPN boxing producer Jim Zirolli.

Room for Creativity

With no crowds to contend with, the network was able to add cameras that otherwise would have interfered with the audience’s view of the fight to provide additional angles, Zirolli said. “We’ve been really creative in the placing of cameras with fewer people in the venue,” he said. 

The new paradigm has allowed ESPN to experiment with different approaches to fight cards, including offering co-main event fights as the opening bout, rather than waiting to air matches later in the live telecast. Typically, the more attractive fights are placed last on the card in an effort to maximize  the live audience. 

“Here, we’re not worried about that because we don’t have any live fans,” Zirolli said. “But if I tell viewers that the first fight on the telecast is the second-best fight on the card, viewers may tune in earlier.”

At press time, Zirolli said that no ESPN staffers contracted the virus while in the bubble, although he said that the odds of keeping people virus-free diminish over time. 

“There’s really no way around it,” he said. “No matter what you do, there has to be a willingness to accept some changes. You’re not going to go there and nobody’s going to get it. The question is then, how are you going to deal with it, and what am I going to do when someone gets it?”

As the major professional leagues gear up for their return, the virus is affecting who gets to play. MLS began its World Cup-style “MLS Is Back” tournament on July 8 and, at press time, had already lost two of the 26 teams due to infections among players and coaches. 

The NBA is scheduled to resume its 2019-20 season on July 30 even as several top players, including Victor Oladipo of the Indiana Pacers and Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal, are sitting out due to virus concerns. The league last week reported that overall, since July 1, 19 NBA players have tested positive for the virus, including Houston Rockets point guard and former league MVP Russell Westbrook, who is quarantining outside the bubble but expects to rejoin the team.

MLB and the NHL have also had a number of players test positive for the virus as they move toward resuming play on July 23 and Aug. 1, respectively. Less uncertain is the start of the college football season, after the Ivy League announced it will cancel all fall sports, and the Big Ten and Pac-12 said they would only play teams within their respective conferences. 

Network executives said they’re gearing up to produce game telecasts despite all the uncertainty. “The learnings that we’ve had from other sports have allowed us to change the way we’re doing productions on some bigger shows,” NBC’s Flood said. “As Sunday Night Football looks at its upcoming season, more and more content will be created in the [production] building.” 

Will Virtual Crowds Roar? 

Executives said there are still some questions surrounding the production of MLB, NHL, NBA and NFL games, including whether artificial crowd sounds will be piped in. NWSL and MLS soccer games feature enhanced audio; U.S. telecasts of European soccer matches have also featured crowd noise. 

NBC Sports’s NFL and NHL coverage will most likely rely on the natural sounds coming from the fields and arenas rather than piping in simulated crowd sounds, Flood said. “We’re looking to enhance the audio of the players and what’s going on the field and ice, rather than bringing in artificial noise,” Flood said. “If we find that it sounds hollow or empty we might adjust, but right now we’re big believers in the sounds of this incredible sport.”

Added CBS Sports’s Bryant: “We’re testing enhanced crowd noises in the NWSL and we’ll test it and see if it could work in the fall. If college football and the NFL are playing without audiences, we’ll see if that works.”

The pandemic has posed a multitude of challenges in delivering live sports programming, producers said, but it has also yielded new production strategies that could remain in place if and when the sports arena returns to normal. 

“We learned a lot about how well technology can facilitate creativity in terms of logistics and distributing production,” Fox Sports’s Davies said. “We’re definitely seeing a sea change in how things are being produced.” 

Added Bryant: “The one silver lining in this whole COVID-19 era is that we’re going to find better ways to do production.” 

As Major League Soccer Wednesday night steps onto the field to begin its 2020 season and the NBA, MLB and NHL gear up for season starts and restarts later this month, the COVID-19 pandemic remains an ominous cloud that threatens to further alter the pro sports landscape.

With its season already delayed three months due to the pandemic, MLS will launch its 2020 tournament July 8 in Orlando without one of its teams, as FC Dallas pulled out Monday after 10 players and one staff member tested positive for the virus. 

Further, a coronavirus outbreak on the Nashville SC team has forced the postponement of tonight’s Nashville-Chicago contest, and it's unclear if that team will be able to participate in the tournament.

The fan-less MLS games, which will be televised by ESPN and Fox Sports, will feature 25 teams and will run from July 8 through Aug. 11. “Our overall goal is to deliver the highest level of production that fans have come to expect from ESPN for decades,” said ESPN executive VP, event and studio production, Stephanie Druley. “Fans in the crowd or no fans, a few cameras or many cameras, overflowing stadiums, or empty arenas, the viewer experience still needs to be great, and we anticipate that it will be.”

MLS’ launch follows the NWSL’s return to the field in late June minus one of its teams -- the Orlando Pride -- after six of that team’s players and four staffers tested positive for COVID-19. The tournament, which is entering its third week, continues to play on without any major health-related issues thus far.

Right behind the MLS are the much anticipated scheduled launches of pro baseball, basketball and hockey later this month, although each sport is experiencing COVID-19-related bumps in the restart road.

More than 30 MLB players have reportedly already tested positive for the virus as teams begin their “summer camp” prior to the July 30 start of the league’s 60-game season. Several teams, including last year’s World Series teams the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, had to cancel scheduled practices earlier this week as they awaited delayed results from players’ COVID-19 tests.

NBA teams began arriving in Orlando to begin resumption of the league’s 2019-20 season in a bubble environment at Disney World. Reportedly several players, including stars Victor Oladipo, Bradley Beal and Spencer Dinwiddle, are sitting out the league restart due to virus concerns, while other players have voiced their concerns about staying healthy despite the closed-in accommodations.

The NHL reported Monday that 23 out of nearly 400 players that have participated in club practices thus far have contracted COVID-19 virus, but the league is still on schedule to begin its training camps on July 13 and its regular season restart on Aug. 1.

Even the college sports ranks have been affected by the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus. The Ivy League has reportedly canceled all of its fall sports events, including college football and college basketball games. Golf's prestigious Ryder Cup competition scheduled for September has also been postponed until 2021 due to the pandemic. 

Sports fans are anxiously awaiting the return of their favorite sports, and players are getting ready to return to the field. Yet the pandemic -- and not the players, owners or fans -- may have the last word on whether the sports leagues actually play ball as scheduled.

The National Women’s Soccer League will launch its 2020 season with a 25-game tournament in Utah beginning this June, the league announced Wednesday.

The league, which last played in October 2019, will kick off its 25-game tournament featuring all nine teams on June 27 at Zions Bank Stadium in Herriman, Utah without fans, said the league. Each team will play four games in the preliminary rounds to determine seeding, with the top eight teams advancing to the quarterfinals. Single elimination games will determine the two finalists, who will play in the Championship match on July 26 at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah.

CBS will televise the opening game as well as the Championship match, while the CBS All Access streaming service will televise live all other games, said the network. 

“As our country begins to safely reopen and adjust to our collective new reality, and with the enthusiastic support of our players, owners, as well as our new and current commercial partners, the NWSL is thrilled to bring professional soccer back to the United States,” said NWSL Commissioner Lisa Baird in a statement. “This exciting month-long tournament will showcase our league’s talented players and provide our fans the type of world-class entertainment they’ve come to expect from the NWSL.”

The NWSL's announcement comes on the heels of the National Hockey League's plans to restart its 2019-2020 season this summer after suspending play in March due to the coronavirus outbreak. 

Conventional wisdom has it that women don’t watch live sports programming. Just don’t tell that to the approximately 47% of women who made up the huge audiences for each of the last two Super Bowls — and not just to watch the commercials.

“Making the assumption that women aren’t attracted to sports is one of the stereotype problems we have in this country,” A+E Networks CEO Nancy Dubuc told me Thursday (Feb. 2) after a press conference announcing Lifetime’s new partnership agreement with the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).

Lifetime is re-entering the live sports arena 20 years after its first turn at sports, televising live games during the WNBA’s inaugural pro-basketball season. It has inked a three-year deal to distribute a live, weekly Saturday afternoon NWSL match.

Unlike the earlier WNBA deal, which effectively ended in 2000 when the league shifted the games to ESPN2 amid sluggish ratings, Dubuc said the broader A+E-NWSL partnership is more aligned with today’s Lifetime media brand than the more narrowly defined Lifetime linear channel.

In addition to the live game telecasts, the deal calls for A+E Networks to take an undisclosed equity stake in the five-year-old pro soccer league and to create NWSL Media, a joint venture with the league to control its broadcast and sponsorship rights, including streaming rights and social media.

“Business is anything but traditional these days, and we don’t see the Lifetime brand as just a television brand, but we see it as a female media brand that has to represent what she is interested in up and down the spectrum in terms of all kinds of content,” Dubuc said.

During the press conference, Dubuc cautioned observers who assumed that Lifetime’s current audience — or women viewers in general — would not get a kick out of watching live sports on the reality-skewing, women’s life-styles-themed network. Recent history has proven that women will tune into compelling live sports events in a major way.

Female viewership for the 2015 Women’s World Cup finals on Fox Sports was up a whopping 57% compared with the 2011 version, according to Nielsen. The World Cup finals in both years featured the U.S. National team — many of whom now play in the NWSL — against Japan.

The July 2015 USA-Japan final drew 23.6 million viewers, then the third most watched English-language soccer match in U.S. history, with women representing an impressive 43% of that audience.

“Sports are great dramatic stories, and if those stories are served up in an entertaining, relatable and passionate way, women crave those authentic stories about aspiration and competition,” Dubuc said. “We see a tremendous amount of overlap with our audience. If you’re going to be a media brand, not just a linear television brand, you have to make sure you’re speaking to all women and all interests.”

A+E Networks has bought an equity stake in the National Women’s Soccer League and A+E’s Lifetime cable channel will become the broadcast partner and a sponsor of the league for three years.

“As a former college athlete, I know the importance of sports in the lives of women and girls and I couldn’t be more thrilled to join forces with NWSL and U.S. Soccer to ensure professional women athletes are elevated as the entire country can watch and be inspired by their strength and athleticism. The teams are filled with some of the best professional players in the world, and we are proud to welcome them to Lifetime,” A+E CEO Nancy Dubuc said in a statement.

The media company and the league have formed a joint venture, NWSL Media, that will act as the media and commercial arm of the league and oversee broadcast and sponsorship rights. NWSL Media will also manage the league’s digital assets, including the redesigned NWSLSoccer.com and a new app. Lifetime will schedule a NWSL Game of the Week on Lifetime on Saturdays at 4 p.m., marking the first time a league game is carried on national TV on a regular basis. Player jerseys will carry a Lifetime patch on their right sleeve.

For more, see B&C.