The Sport Thread

BT Sport ESPN will be showing Muhammad Ali's funeral this evening - I believe it'll be a simulcast of SportsCenter's coverage.

There's also a fair bit of Ultra HD stuff coming up over the next few weeks: the whole of the FIH Hockey Champions Trophy, followed by a few days of an event which doesn't appear to have been announced yet, so I'd best not mention it until it has!

Eurosport 1 carrying ATP Stuttgart in place of WTA Aegon, rain at the WTA event, confusion reigns(sorry), all the Ad break bumpers still referring to the WTA event though.

Henley Regatta? I've not seen any official announcement of it but it's appeared in Digiguide schedules.

That's the one. (I did a quick Google and couldn't see any official announcement.)

If it is, it's the very pinnicle of desperate sports channel schedule stuffing.

Admittedly I'm not an expert on the Henley Regatta, but is this event even internationally competitive?

It's a toffs social gathering, with something going on the river every now and then. It's an event to be seen at.
It would be like Sky Sports standing on the pavement outside Ascot racecourse, on ladies day, watching what everyone going in is wearing, and then reading out the race results every now and then.

But I'll give them this - the Regatta is different, unless BT Sport have been involved in a absolute rights battle with Eurosport for live and exclusive arm wrestling, or wood cutting to show in glorious 4K.

Think Henley as the Football U21 World Championships. Many of those participating will be in the 2020 Olympics Squad and other international events in the coming years. I'm intrigued though as to how it'll be covered in UHD. The required camera positions will be many. Past YouTube presentations have been dreadful though. The BBC Red Buttoned some of them previously, once the link failed and was never restored.

Thought I'd post some screen grabs from the various coverage of Muhammad Ali's funeral.



















Edit : For some reason IMGUR uploaded the original images instead of the cropped versions.

Sky using their own commentators for the rugby summer internationals this morning, though I wonder if it's off-tube.

Fox Sports Australia's replay wipe is a giant "XV", which I find odd, but maybe is how they brand their rugby union coverage in a country where rugby league is more popular.

Well, for the New Zealand v Wales match, Johnny Hammond was commentating with Ieuan Evans. Pre match, they spoke to Evans in Auckland, so I think that was definitely done on site, as opposed to off tube. With regards to the England game, Graham Simmonds, their touchline reporter, is at the ground. So, I imagine that Miles Harrison and Stuart Barnes are there too.

Ah, missed those bits! A lot of expense for Sky to go to, to send them out to Australia/NZ for over a fortnight. Wonder if it'll be Mark Robson/Shane Horgan or the likes for the Ireland match later.

Also worth mentioning, Sky Sports studio presentation of the U20 rugby world championship is being done in the studio, that is usually used for coverage of overseas cricket, with the presenters standing up. Obviously, the main studio being used for other events.

Considering thats in Manchester thought it be easier to do pitchside.