Rodolfo Martinez ESPN La Liga
As part of ESPN’s coverage of the new LaLiga season, which the network has had exclusivity for eight years for the US, will begin on Friday the 12th with the broadcast of 10 matches this week. The production team, supervised by Rodolfo Martínez, Senior VP of ESPN Sports and International Production, is producing colorful content around the tournament, such as the series Diarios de Bicicleta (Bicycle diaries) hosted by Martín Ainstein.
Martínez participated in a virtual press conference together with former player Pablo Zabaleta, a soccer analyst, and Fernando Palomo, a play-by-play sports narrator. He said that one of the lessons learned from LaLiga last season was to include more of Spain’s colorful notes for the US audience.
“The Diarios de Bicicleta, in both languages (English and Spanish), will continue, where we are able to capture some of the atmospheres of the stadium during the matches,” Martínez explained. In these reports, Ainstein tours on a bicycle some stadiums and locations in Spain using innovative production resources to record intimate interviews like the one made last season with Dani Alves, a former Barcelona player last.
With this content, ESPN+ seeks to offer more context about the culture and LaLiga to new audiences of its broadcast. Also this year, for the second time in its history, US ABC is broadcasting one LaLiga match, Barcelona vs. Rayo Vallecano, at 3pm on Saturday the 13th. ESPN+, ABC, and ESPN Deportes will join forces to offer English and Spanish coverage of the opening weekend of the 92nd season of LaLiga.
To promote the new season, ESPN premiered a musical piece, Hot by Daddy Yankee and Pitbull.
The 380 LaLiga Santander matches will be broadcast in English and Spanish live on ESPN+.
