ESPN America
ESPN America was a British-based European sports network, focusing on professional and collegiate sports of the United States and Canada. Originally launched on 5 December 2002 as NASN (the ''North American Sports Network''), ESPN America broadcast a selection of top North American professional and collegiate sports leagues including Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Canadian Football League (CFL), 24 hours a day on digital cable and digital satellite television. Formerly operated by Setanta Sports with backing from Benchmark Capital Europe, it was acquired by the American sports media company ESPN in March 2007. It was subsequently re-branded as ESPN America on 1 February 2009 before closing on 1 August 2013. Programming Programming on ESPN America varied from country to country. The channel operated three feeds throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. In the United Kingdom, Irelan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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576i
576i is a standard-definition television, standard-definition digital video mode, originally used for digitizing analog television in most countries of the world where the utility frequency for electric power distribution is 50 Hz. Because of its close association with the legacy color encoding systems, it is often referred to as PAL, PAL/SECAM or SECAM when compared to its 60 Hz (typically, see PAL-M) NTSC-colour-encoded counterpart, 480i. The ''576'' identifies a vertical resolution of 576 lines, and the ''i'' identifies it as an Interlaced video, interlaced resolution. The field rate, which is 50 Hertz, Hz, is sometimes included when identifying the video mode, i.e. 576i50; another notation, endorsed by both the International Telecommunication Union in BT.601 and SMPTE in SMPTE 259M, includes the frame rate, as in 576i/25. Operation In analogue television, the full Raster scan, raster uses 625 lines, with 49 lines having no image content to allow time for cathode r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Setanta Sports
Setanta Sports is a sports television company based in Dublin, Ireland broadcasting throughout select Eurasian. The company was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to international audiences. The company previously operated channels in Ireland, the UK, Asia, Africa, Australia, the United States, and Canada Operations Current Eurasia Setanta Sports sold the majority of its operations, however it continues to own and operate its operations in Georgia, Ukraine, and CIS. Former Republic of Ireland In December 2015, Eir purchased Setanta Sports Ireland Ltd. On 5 July 2016 Setanta Sports was rebranded Eir Sport. Africa Setanta operated Setanta Sports and Setanta Action until October 2013 when the channels were acquired by 21st Century Fox. In July 2014, Fox announced that from August 2014 the channels would be rebranded Fox Sports and Fox Sports 2. In August 2019, it was announced that the network would rebrand as ESPN Africa on 30 Augus ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Major League Lacrosse
Major League Lacrosse (MLL) was a men's field lacrosse league in the United States. The league's inaugural season was in 2001. Teams played anywhere from ten to 16 games in a summertime regular season. This was followed by a four-team playoff for the championship trophy, the Steinfeld Trophy, named after founder Jake Steinfeld. League attendance peaked at 6,417 in 2011 and the 2019 average was 4,587. The Chesapeake Bayhawks and New York Lizards (originally the Baltimore Bayhawks and Long Island Lizards) were MLL members throughout its existence and competed in the first three championship games, with the Lizards winning two. The Boston Cannons, the last of the six charter franchises to remain in their original market with their original name, won their first championship in 2011. The Philadelphia Barrage returned to the league in 2020 after an 11-season hiatus. After moving from Bridgeport to Philadelphia, the Barrage won three championships in four years from 2004 to 2007. Fo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arena Football League (1987–2008)
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in North America after the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the National Football League (NFL) until the AFL closed in 2019. The AFL played a formerly proprietary code known as arena football, a form of indoor American football played on a 66-by-28 yard field (about a quarter of the surface area of an NFL field), with rules encouraging offensive performance, resulting in a typically faster-paced and higher-scoring game compared to NFL games. The sport was invented in the early 1980s and patented by Jim Foster, a former executive of the United States Football League (USFL) and the NFL. Each of the league's 32 seasons culminated in the ArenaBowl, with the winner being crowned the league's champion for that season. From 2000 to 2009, the AF ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Championship
''NCAA men's ice hockey championship'' refers to either of the two tournaments in men's ice hockey – one in Division I and one in Division III – contested by the National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ... (NCAA) since 1971. The NCAA Division II Men's Ice Hockey Tournament, contested from 1978 to 1984 and from 1993 to 1999, was discontinued due to a lack of NCAA Division II, Division II conferences sponsoring ice hockey. *NCAA Division I men's ice hockey tournament *NCAA Division III men's ice hockey tournament Starting in 1999, the semifinals and finals for the Division I championship are branded as the "Frozen Four", echoing the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament's "Final Four". The NCAA started a NCAA Women's Froz ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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College Basketball
In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA), the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA), and the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA). Each of these various organizations is subdivided into one to three divisions, based on the number and level of scholarships that may be provided to the athletes. Each organization has different conferences to divide up the teams into groups. Teams are selected into these conferences depending on the location of the schools. These conferences are put in due to the regional play of the teams and to have a structural schedule for each team to play for the upcoming year. During conference play the teams are ranked not only through the entire NCAA, but the conference as well in which they have tourn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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College Football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most other sports in North America, no official minor league farm organizations exist in American or Canadian football. Therefore, college football is generally considered to be the second tier of American and Canadian football; one step ahead of high school competition, and one step below professional competition (the NFL). In some areas of the US, especially the South and the Midwest, college football is more popular than professional football, and for much of the 20th century college football was seen as more prestigious. A player's performance in college football directly impacts his chances of playing professional football. The best collegiate players will typically declare for the professional draft after three to four years of colleg ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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College World Series
The College World Series (CWS), officially the NCAA Men's College World Series (MCWS), is an annual baseball tournament held in June in Omaha, Nebraska. The MCWS is the culmination of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Baseball Championship tournament—featuring 64 teams in the first round—which determines the NCAA Division I college baseball champion. The eight participating teams are split into two, four-team, double-elimination brackets, with the winners of each bracket playing in a best-of-three championship series. History The first edition of the College World Series was held in 1947 at Hyames Field in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The tournament was held there again in 1948, but was moved to Lawrence Stadium in Wichita, Kansas for the 1949 tournament. Since 1950, the College World Series (CWS) has been held in Omaha, Nebraska. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nordic Countries
The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; the autonomous administrative division, autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland; and the autonomous region of Åland. The Nordic countries have much in common in their way of life, History of Scandinavia, history, religion and Nordic model, social structure. They have a long history of political unions and other close relations but do not form a singular entity today. The Scandinavism, Scandinavist movement sought to unite Denmark, Norway and Sweden into one country in the 19th century. With the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden (Norwegian independence), the independence of Finland in the early 20th century and the 1944 Icelandic constitutional referendum, this move ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Republic Of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. Around 2.1 million of the country's population of 5.13 million people resides in the Greater Dublin Area. The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east, and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic. The legislature, the , consists of a lower house, ; an upper house, ; and an elected President () who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the (Prime Minister, literally 'Chief', a title not used in English), who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in the west, to Egypt's Suez Canal. Varying sources limit it to the countries of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, a region that was known by the French during colonial times as "''Afrique du Nord''" and is known by Arabs as the Maghreb ("West", ''The western part of Arab World''). The United Nations definition includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and the Western Sahara, the territory disputed between Morocco and the Sahrawi Republic. The African Union definition includes the Western Sahara and Mauritania but not Sudan. When used in the term Middle East and North Africa (MENA), it often refers only to the countries of the Maghreb. North Africa includes the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and plazas de s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |