OLN Nears Goal to Win Lacrosse Package

[Sonny]

OLN Nears Goal to Win Lacrosse Package
August 25, 2005
By John Consoli

Comcast's OLN is negotiating with the National Lacrosse League for a cable TV rights package that would televise one national game of the week on Saturday or Sunday, beginning with the upcoming season that kicks off in December.

NLL Commissioner Jim Jennings said OLN has an advantage over ESPN because it has available weekend windows to air the games live, while ESPN could only air them on a tape-delayed basis.

Currently, most NLL games are televised region by region on cable sports nets, while NBC owns the rights to televise the NLL All-Star Game and the Champion's Cup Final.

Jennings said a partnership with OLN would work particularly well because in six markets--Philadelphia, Buffalo, N.Y., Minnesota, Colorado, San Jose, Calif., and Arizona--National Hockey League teams and NLL teams play in the same arenas, and in some instances, the same day, so OLN would already have its cameras in some of the locations where the NLL games could be televised.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent ... 1001021696

[Aaron]

sweet that would actually give me a reason to watch that channel now

[Tarzan]

ESPN's weekends are full of poker, dog shows, eating contests and other junk that the brain trust in Connecticut categorizes as a sport.

OLN is a strange fit (although they will have hockey soon), but frankly I don’t care if they put the NLL games on MTV or the travel channel. It will introduce the game to a different segment of the population.

If the Connecticut brain trust can’t move reruns of this years world championships of celebrity poker or the 2002 world championship of hotdog eating, so we can see live indoor lacrosse, the NLL should move the games to another network… PLUS my Tivo doesn’t care what network the game is on.

Game a week would be nice!