Now on ESPN: Street League Skateboarding

As ESPN continues its quest to literally show every sport imaginable on one of its networks, their newest conquest has arrived…Street League Skateboarding.

That’s right, skater Rob Dyrdek’s Street League will be seen on ESPN 2 this fall, with skaters competing for over $1.2M in prizes.

Street League Skateboarding™ announced today that it will be entering a multi-year partnership with ESPN for worldwide distribution in more than 198 countries.  The 2010 Street League DC Pro Tour fueled by Monster Energy is a prestigious, invite-only, three-event series featuring the top 24 pros in the world.  Founded by twenty-year professional skateboarder and entrepreneur, Rob Dyrdek, Street League™ raises the bar of competitive professional skateboarding with the most prize money in skateboarding history, skate plaza course design in world-class arenas, and an instant-scoring format that makes every trick count.

Street League™  will air the first stop of the tour beginning Wednesday, September 15 at 8 p.m. PT on ESPN2 and will continue its coverage of each stop every Wednesday at the same time slot through September 29th.

Street League™  features the exclusive participation of 24 of the best street skateboarders in the world. To assist their transition into the league, each pro has been given the option to compete in two non-sanctioned wildcard events until the end of 2010. Beginning in 2011, the pros will compete exclusively in the Street League™ series and other Street League™ sanctioned events worldwide.  Street League™ will work in conjunction with ESPN to allow Street League™ pros to participate in ESPN-owned events for the duration of the partnership.

Even though the event will only air for three weeks total, its interesting to not only see ESPN taking a chance on street skatboarding, but also recognizing the sport as a viable primetime option (at least for those on the west coast).  Moves like this always seem exciting to me, mainly because it shows a willingness to put something other than the four major sports on television.  Accompanying that willingness is the fact that it must make sense as far advertising revenue and the like, or else the program wouldn’t air (right?).

Hopefully, this move can lead to an even greater showing of sports programming diversity in the future. If for no other reason that the fact that its nice to have options.

Tags: ESPN, Rob Dyrdek, sports television, street league, street skateboard league

Category: Fringe Sports