The Pan-american Sports Network (PSN) will broadcast National Basketball Association (NBA) regular season and playoff games live to millions of basketball fans throughout Latin America as part of a new multi-year agreement with the NBA.
Beginning with the start of the 2000-2001 NBA season in November, PSN will broadcast 25 regular season games and up to eight NBA playoff games from the First Round and the Conference Semifinals. In addition to broadcasting regular season and playoff games, PSN will televise the NBA All-Star Saturday Night events and the weekly, half-hour magazine program ‘NBA Jam.’
Throughout the season, PSN will report daily on the NBA with news, scores and features included on its weeknight ‘PSN News’ program. Recently, PSN also partnered with the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), a wholly-owned entity of the NBA, to broadcast 10 regular season games and selected playoff games throughout the next three seasons of that league. PSN will conclude the WNBA 2000 season with live on-site coverage of the 2000 WNBA Championship Series this weekend in Houston as the three-time defending WNBA Champion Houston Comets take on the Eastern Conference Champion New York Liberty.
‘PSN has quickly succeeded in bringing Latin American sports fans closer to their favorite athletes, teams and championships and by adding the NBA to our line-up of live events, we are now connecting millions of basketball fans in our region with the best basketball players and teams in the world,’ said Jacques Kremer, President and CEO of PSN. ‘Interest in the NBA throughout Latin America will be at an all-time high, and PSN will devote the resources and talent necessary to make our coverage both comprehensive and distinctive,’ said Kremer.
‘PSN plans to broadcast NBA games on-site twice every month with both Spanish and Portuguese speaking play-by-play and color commentators,’ added Sebastian Dominguez, Executive Vice President of Broadcasting for PSN. ‘PSN is uniquely attuned to the interests of sports fans in Latin America, and we will treat every NBA game as a major event. On PSN, basketball fans will not simply watch the game, they will experience the NBA.’ Launched last February, PSN is a 24-hour, all sports cable and satellite digital television network dedicated exclusively to meeting the unique interests of Latin American sports fans.
Over eight million satellite and cable households currently receive PSN, with 9.5 million subscribers projected by the end of the year. PSN transforms a single programming stream into Spanish and Portuguese programming streams and will do so throughout all of its NBA telecasts.
PSN is a portfolio company of Pan American Sports Holdings Ltd., a fully integrated sports and media platform. The platform encompasses PSN, PSN.com, Pan-american Sports Teams and Traffic Marketing Esportivo. Pan American Sports Holdings is owned by Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst and managed by The Muller Sports Group in partnership with Hicks, Muse.
NBA Entertainment (NBAE) — the Emmy Award-winning production and programming division of the NBA and WNBA — is one of the largest suppliers of sports television and Internet programming in the world. NBA programming was distributed globally to 205 countries, in 42 different languages via 129 telecasters during the 1999-2000 season.
NBAE produces NBA.com TV, the NBA’s recently launched 24-hour channel, and also produces several weekly television shows, including NBA Inside Stuff, NBA Matchup, Vintage NBA, NBA Action, WNBA Action and NBA Jam; creates exclusive content for NBA.com and WNBA.com; and packages NBA and WNBA games along with highlight and lifestyle shows for distribution around the world. NBAE also handles the publishing business for the NBA and WNBA, including NBA Inside Stuff and Hoop magazines, children’s titles published by Scholastic Books, and other NBA and WNBA books. All magazines and books are written or edited by NBA Editorial.
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