BROADCASTING: ESPN announces Free Weekend – February 3-6

• ESPN to broadcast first ever live free-to-air Premier League match
• Free Weekend available to all Sky, TopUp TV, BT Vision and Freeview viewers
• Live sport also includes Serie A, NBA and UFC

ESPN will make sports broadcasting history in February when it screens the first ever live free-to-air Barclays Premier League match to millions of Freeview customers.

Manchester City’s home fixture against Fulham will be the first match in the Premier League’s 20-year existence to be made available to those without subscription packages, meaning that up to 10 million UK households with access to Freeview will have the chance to watch the match through their set-top boxes.

As part of its latest marketing drive to entice new subscribers, ESPN will be free-to-view for millions of sports fans across the UK over an unmissable weekend, with the broadcaster offering viewers another chance to sample its extensive range of live international sport free of charge.

ESPN’s Free Weekend runs from 6am on Friday 3rd February to 6am on Monday 6th February, and both ESPN and ESPN HD will be made available to all Sky, TopUp TV and BT Vision subscribers in the UK and Ireland.

The standard-definition channel will also made available to all households who have the subscription-free digital TV service Freeview, with ESPN estimating that approximately 20 million UK households will have free access to their service.

As well as live Premier League football, ESPN will showcase top-flight football from across Europe, including Serie A and Germany’s Bundesliga, plus there will be live ATP tennis, action from the NBA, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and live studio-based shows, including the popular weekly Talk of the Terrace show, hosted by Kelly Cates and Nat Coombs.

ESPN’s coverage of the Barclays Premier League match from the Etihad Stadium will take centre stage as Roberto Mancini’s title-chasing Manchester City host Martin Jol’s Fulham, who will be looking for points to push on towards the European qualification places.

Millions of viewers will be able to sample ESPN’s critically acclaimed Matchday coverage, fronted by Ray Stubbs and pundits including Kevin Keegan and Steve McManaman, with match commentary from Jon Champion.

The match will be the first live top-flight game to be shown to a non-subscription audience in nearly 20 years, since ITV screened live coverage of a Division One match between Liverpool and Manchester United on April 26th 1992.

Kicking proceedings off on Friday night will be the Bundesliga clash between German champions Borussia Dortmund and FC Nuremburg, then on Saturday night Roma take on Inter Milan in Serie A.

Sunday will see three more games from the Italian top flight, including the evening kick-off between title-chasing AC Milan and Napoli.

These games, along with FC Kaiserslautern v FC Cologne from the Bundesliga, form part of the channel’s newly launched Sunday sports strand ESPN Sunday, where live sporting action is complemented with studio analysis, as well as ESPN’s football debate and chat shows Talk of the Terrace and Pardon the Interruption, where presenters Mark Chapman and Steve Bunce debate the week’s biggest sporting stories.

The Free Weekend will also feature ESPN’s live and exclusive coverage of the NBA regular season, with Friday night action as the New York Knicks travel to the Boston Celtics.

There will be more live US-based sport later in the weekend, with live coverage of UFC 143 from Las Vegas on Saturday night as Nick Diaz fights Carlos Condit for the UFC Interim Welterweight Championship.

Also included in the broadcaster’s Free Weekend will be coverage of the Open Sud de France, ESPN’s first foray into live tennis, and there will be coverage from the quarter finals to the final throughout the weekend.

The tournament is part of the ATP World Tour 250 circuit, and players including former Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych, Gilles Simon and Robin Soderling are set to compete in Montpellier.

Jeroen Oerlemans, ESPN’s Vice President for its European TV operations said: “Millions of UK fans have already discovered the great range of great sport ESPN offers – from the Barclays Premier League to Serie A, to cricket, darts, motorsports and UFC.

“This is a great opportunity for us to introduce that to millions more and let them sample the programming ESPN has on offer.”

ESPN’s latest Free Weekend offering follows on from similar successful trials last year, but this is first time that Freeview viewers will have the chance to watch a Premier League match.

The broadcaster is expecting to beat its previous highest audience for a English top-flight match, when nearly 1m tuned to watch Stoke City against Manchester United last September.

ESPN is currently available for free to all Virgin Media customers throughout January.

The channel reported solid growth across its television, online and mobile platforms last summer, despite seeing its allocation of Premier League games cut by half to 23 per season from 2010/2011.

In response the channel secured live rights to FA Cup matches, Aviva Premiership rugby and European football to maintain subscriber numbers.

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