ESPN is entering its 21st season as the NBA’s broadcast partner and will make a number of updates and changes to its presentation of NBA games and studio broadcasts for the 2022-23 season.
Even though the votes on the games will be the same — the biggest news from Tuesday’s media call was the return of Hubie Brown on a one-year deal to do “about 15 games” and the confirmation that JJ Redick was a more regular game analyst this season – there will be a number of ways things will look and sound different when you watch games on ESPN. Among the biggest is a new ESPN-themed NBA for the first time in over a decade, as they looked to create a more contemporary sound.
It’s a perfectly interesting theme, nothing particularly exciting, but it will surely elicit reactions, good and bad, simply by being new. This will be heard before the matches, before NBA Countdownand in promotional packages, while NBA today might get its own theme in the near future.
As for visuals, there is an all-new graphics package for games and promos this season, with a focus on team colors and logos (note: music is not part of the NBA changes on ESPN , but just commercial music that they previously provided (a bit of support for the new look).
In games, the biggest change is a scoring bug that will no longer occupy the entire bottom of the screen, but rather a condensed look to provide more real estate on the field. In addition to the condensed size, fans will also be happy to know that the color swatches for each team will change based on the uniform that team is wearing so they always match, ensuring that there is no no more confusion when a team dressed in white might have a green score box.
They also have new player graphics to provide in-game updates and statistics which share a similar look to scorebug.
Full-screen graphics will also be more colorful and feature more of the player images.
Overall, this is a solid update, especially with the scorebug. Showing more of the lay of the land is always a good thing and continuing to provide information to viewers without too much clutter is a welcome change. All of these changes will go into effect during ESPN’s first preseason broadcast Thursday night.
