Is there any sportscast more padded than the Triple Crown?

[StarvingButStrong]

Consider the Preakness today. It’s being given a two hour time slot on a major network.

According to the records, over the past thirty years the winning times have varied (!) from 1 minute 53 seconds all the way to 1 minute 55 seconds.

Let’s be generous and call that TWO MINUTES.

Two minutes actual ‘content’ in a 120 minute slot. That’s 1.6666% race and 98.3333 fluff/commericals/filler.

I know some people gripe at all the hoopla around the Super Bowl, but at that proportion we would be getting a 60 minute game in a SIXTY HOUR time slot!

Sheesh.

Anyway, anyone know of a worse case of time padding?

[Zeldar]

I had some fun reviving an old Kentucky Derby thread that was about the same idea. FWIW, there was a Jeopardy! clue recently, maybe even FJ, that pointed to the Derby as the oldest continuing sporting event!

It’s hard to point to anything with more padding in the broadcast, though. These sponsors must have much faith in the crowd that will sit there for that long for 2 minutes of thrills.

[DCnDC]

The Olympics? Including lead-up, it’s practically 24-7 coverage for an entire month on at least 4 different channels and somehow they seem to show almost no actual sports.

[postcards]

Not exactly a ‘sporting event’, but it took LeBron James about two seconds to say "The Miami Heat’ on his one hour ESPN special a couple of years ago.

As a ratio, 2 seconds out of 60 minutes vs. 2 minutes out of 2 hours seems to be a lot of padding.

[Alessan]

I suspect major sumo matches may have it beat.

[Lamar_Mundane]

The Super Bowl has about 11 minutes of actual play, but gets six hours of pre-game coverage and about three hours of in-game play. That beats the crap out of horse racing.

[Baron_Greenback]

@Zeldar

I had some fun reviving an old Kentucky Derby thread that was about the same idea. FWIW, there was a Jeopardy! clue recently, maybe even FJ, that pointed to the Derby as the oldest continuing sporting event!

The Kentucky Derby isn’t the oldest continuing sporting event, as it is was inspired by the Epsom Derby, which has been held every year since 1780. I wonder if there is an older one?

[running_coach]

@DCnDC

The Olympics? Including lead-up, it’s practically 24-7 coverage for an entire month on at least 4 different channels and somehow they seem to show almost no actual sports.

But there’s loads of action that could be shown if the network chose to.

[Smapti]

Perhaps the Preakness is just decadent and depraved.

[Ellen_Cherry]

Moving from MPSIMS to Game Room.

[It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery]

It didn’t help that NBC has the exclusive rights to the Dixie Handicap, the race run before the Preakness at Pimlico - and not only didn’t they show the Dixie, they didn’t allow the all-racing channel (HRTV) to show it either.

They do know people are betting on the races, right?

[N9IWP]

I’ve had the same thought. Of course, the race time is known (I think), so there is nothing stopping you from tuning in 10 min before the race and stopping after the race is over (unless it is really close, then you would probably want to wait for the official results)

Brian
ps.s this claims to date back to 1673: http://www.scortonarrow.com/

[N9IWP]

Though website says this:

I would take issue with your claim that you host ‘The World longest established recorded Sporting Event’.
The Kipling Cotes Derby Horserace goes right back to 1513 and is held each year in Yorkshire - that is a 160 years older than your Antient Scorton Silver Arrow!

Yes - and a great Sporting tradition it is too, usually held on the 3rd Thursday in March - at ‘Shrovetide’.
I believe however that it was ‘thought’ to have started in 1519 but apart from just one mention of a race in 1555 there are no other records until the 18th century when it became a regular fixture in the Racing Calendar.
The Kiplingcotes Derby has not been held continuously each year, whereas apart from various war years, The Antient Scorton Arrow has been almost continuous since 1673. Our records go right back to 1673, proving our claim to the longest recorded sporting events in the world.
At least these two great sporting events are held in Yorkshire, so long may they both continue..
Further details can be found at www.wicstun.com/derby.

[Bullitt]

@Baron_Greenback

The Kentucky Derby isn’t the oldest continuing sporting event, as it is was inspired by the Epsom Derby, which has been held every year since 1780. I wonder if there is an older one?

I think Zeldar misquoted Jeopardy!, because the KY Derby is the oldest continuous annual sporting event in the United States.

[borschevsky]

So the Preakness is about 120 minutes of total coverage for a 120 second event. What about the 100 metres at the Olympics? It’s about 10 seconds, so 10 minutes of coverage would be the same ratio as the Preakness. I don’t know how much coverage it gets, but I think it’s more than 10 minutes.

[President_Johnny_Gentle]

NBC is giving the Belmont 11 hours of coverage starting on Thursday. The race will be over in about 2:30. The fluff to content ratio will therefore be approximately 263:1.

@borschevsky

So the Preakness is about 120 minutes of total coverage for a 120 second event. What about the 100 metres at the Olympics? It’s about 10 seconds, so 10 minutes of coverage would be the same ratio as the Preakness. I don’t know how much coverage it gets, but I think it’s more than 10 minutes.

I think that the Olympics are a different sort of beast however, since the 100 meter is only one of many track events, and many more are shown during the coverage. As noted above, although there are other horse races during the coverage time for the Derby/Preakness/Belmont, they are intentionally ignored.

Moreover, the 100 m has multiple heats which are all part of the same event. In 2008, there were 18 heats if I counted correctly. The total time of all the heats exceeds the total time of a single horse race.

[fiddlesticks]

@President_Johnny_Gentle

NBC is giving the Belmont 11 hours of coverage starting on Thursday. The race will be over in about 2:30. The fluff to content ratio will therefore be approximately 263:1.

To be fair, there will be preliminary horse races mixed in within those 11 hours. Looks like there are four races on the day of the race and two on Friday that are big enough to get TV coverage.

[Sparky812]

I think Mike Tyson’s fights back in his heyday might be comparable.
First, there’s all the hype, the weigh-ins, adertising, the trash talking, etc…
Then a whole afternoon and evening of undercards, hours of profiling the two fighters, updates from dressing rooms, warm-ups, meetings with the ref, etc. all leading up to the main event. The grand entrances of both fighters, introductions, the fighters square off, and Tyson would knock them out in the minute of the first round.

I remember the Marvis Frazier fight in 1986, I looked down to twist the cap off my beer and the fight was over, in 30 seconds!

[It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery]

@fiddlesticks

To be fair, there will be preliminary horse races mixed in within those 11 hours. Looks like there are four races on the day of the race and two on Friday that are big enough to get TV coverage.

Sure there are other big races being run, but I’ve been told that networks don’t like to show many undercard races on Triple Crown broadcasts because they think viewers will confuse them for the big races and turn the broadcast off early. :eek:

Actually, if networks think viewers are that stupid, that explains a whole lot about TV schedules.

[zamboniracer]

I’m thinking the Super Bowl has the most fluff broadcasting associated with it, if we include not only the broadcast network’s multi-hour pre-and-post game shows but the essentially 2-week long pregames shows on other sports networks that DON"T broadcast the game, such as ESPN and NFLN.