Kingdom Of The Giants :: Belfast Giants Fan Community, News & Views
Sky Sports News!
07-Jan-2008 | Discuss this Article
The profile of the Belfast Giants and the other competing teams in the Elite Ice Hockey League continues to grow across the UK with the League today receiving it very own dedicated news website over on Sky Sports News
This is just the latest in a series of events this season that have increased exposure of the sport across Britain. First of all we had the advent of the new "As Live" coverage of one Elite League game per week. This show began showing on a Thursday evening, but, with improved ratings has now moved to the more exclusive early Friday evening slot.
On top of the highlights show, the Sky Sports News channel has also begun to show results on their tickers at the bottom of the screen and the table down the right hand side. These have shown up during their most watched shows - Football Tonight and Through the Night. Shows which give the channel its peak viewing figures and handing our sport much more exposure than in recent memory.
But just how good or important is this coverage? Thinking back to the ISL days in the early seasons of the Belfast Giants' existence, Sky Sports ran their programme "Face Off". Back then the show was a magazine type show with highlights of a featured game, and all the goals, saves and fight action from the other games.
This year, the programme has taken on a different style, showing in full a game from the previous week's action. To me, the old ISL magazine style was a better idea. A magazine style show would allow some of the less interesting moments of a game to be cut out giving a more entertaining snapshot. It would also allow more coverage for each team. So far, for example, the Belfast Giants have been featured once, and the Odyssey Arena not at all.
The show itself, however, goes from strength to strength. The differing camera angles provided by having more than just a centre ice camera cetainly add to the game. This is a big improvement over the ISL programme and the attempts of NASN last season in covering the game. The commentary by Dave Simms and Nick Rothwell is informative for the new viewer without being too patronising for the hardened hockey viewer.
It's early days with the website, but it has to be a big step forward. The traffic on the Sky Sports website is phenomenally high. Some people are bound to stumble upon it and take an interest. Hopefully this will cause them to do some more research and maybe take in a game, be it EIHL, EPL or ENL level.
Do I think it will make a difference? I hope so. Maybe I'm naive and have high hopes, but I would love to see the playoff finals get live coverage. What better advert for this great sport we follow than to have the best event on live TV with 7000 noisy fans in a full arena showing what a good time we have?
What do you think? Get onto the forum and let us know!
- Aaron Kernohan
- Aaron is a born again student, currently at Queens University Belfast reading Environmental Planning. He has been contributing to KotG for a couple of seasons now. He has been known to be a bit of a stats nut always aware when a big landmark is sneaking up on a player and often cursing a player by commenting on it. Away from the Odyssey and the studies, he likes to spend time trying to not fall into the Lagan.
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| P | TEAM | GP | W(OT) | L(OT) | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blaze | 54 | 36(5) | 11(2) | 84 |
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| 3 | Panthers | 54 | 30(3) | 18(3) | 69 |
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