Super Bowl 2021

Yes, it was very seamless. Just the graphics switch from CBS to NFL. Nicely done.

Very smooth.

I’ve often wondered why exactly the world feed is branded “NFL Network” - as remarked on in the past, NFL Network doesn’t actually show the Super Bowl (IIRC it closes down for the duration of the match and just shows a graphic with the score).

It does appear to be a world feed much like every other country around the world would produce (but is a bit of an alien concept in the US) - the match pictures are the same, but with different score graphics and replay wipes. It does differ quite significantly when the ball's not in play though (eg with in-vision reporters on the domestic feed or focusing on different players on the bench) so you couldn't get away with sound from one and pictures from another for any significant amount of time.

We didn’t spend much time on those new CBS graphics, but they are the best of what unfortunately is a pretty bad bunch at the moment, although I fear all that animation will annoy as the next regular season progresses.

To mark the Super Bowl, RTÉ put up this article yesterday- while I had a vague memory of them showing NFL highlights on a Monday evening in the 1980s/90s, I wouldn’t have recalled them actually showing the Super Bowl live and less so that Myles Dungan (probably best known for a stint in the news division presenting Five Seven Live and its predecessor) anchored. Nowadays there’s no separate Irish broadcaster of American football, all coverage is from the UK rights holders.

https://www.rte.ie/sport/us-sport/2021/0205/1195286-harp-and-the-fridge-irelands-1980s-nfl-flirtation/

I am too young to remember any RTE coverage of NFL but the end probably coincided with Channel 4 but TV3 as it was took the ITV feed when they showed it back in the mid 2000s then when it went to BBC Sport they took the NFL Network feed for a couple of years with no studio presentation but I don't think it has been covered by Irish TV since around 2010.

Setanta showed Sunday Night & Monday Night Football for two seasons in the early 2010s - in or about 2013 or so. Not sure what the circumstances were re U.K. rights, only that Sky didn’t have those games at that point - it may have been Eurosport or Channel 5.

Sunday Night was Channel 4 in that period and BBC had MNF on the Red Button for a while too before Channel 4 got exclusive FTA rights for a couple of seasons.

Channel 5 might have had it around that time too.

I noticed when comparing BBC's coverage to Sky Sports NFL that the BBC seemed to be about 5-10 seconds behind Sky, so I'm wondering if the BBC delayed the feeds to allow them to listen ahead and cleanly pre-empt all the promotions.

good spot! There was a 5 second delay on the final output to allow the gallery to cut to world feed pics (on the same delay) in case any commercial references slipped through the net.

There was no Whisper credit at the end so I think it was an in house BBC Sport production, that must be the first time one has come from BT Sport, i’d imagine. Also odd for the lack of any BBC Sport branding on the set or even the screens.

4 pages till we got a gag/comment about clocks and rules. I expected worse, well done everyone.

On a slightly related note, now that the season is over, is the anticipated switch of Sky Sports NFL back to Action happening? Looking in the schedule for next Monday it still seems to be 100% gridiron related programming.