Sports Emmy Awards

Sports Emmy Awards
Sports Emmy Awards
Current: 42nd Sports Emmy Awards
Awarded for	Outstanding achievement in sports television coverage
Website	Sports Emmy Awards

The Sports Emmy Awards are presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) in recognition of excellence in American sports television programming, including sports-related series, live coverage of sporting events, and best sports announcers. The awards ceremony, presenting Emmys from the previous calendar year, is usually held on a Spring Monday night, sometime in the last two weeks in April or the first week in May. The Sports Emmy Awards are all given away at one ceremony, unlike the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards, which hold a "Creative Arts" ceremony in which Emmys are given to behind-the-scenes personnel.

History[]

The first Emmy for "Best Sports Coverage" was handed out at the second annual Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony in 1950, where KTLA, a local television station in Los Angeles, won the award for coverage of wrestling. The following year, another Los Angeles-based station, KNBH, won an Emmy for their coverage of the Los Angeles Rams American football team. At the seventh Primetime Emmys in 1955, NBC became the first major network to win a Sports Emmy Award for its series, the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports.

In 1979, an Emmys exclusively for sports coverage was held for the first time at the Rainbow Room in New York City. Winners included golf announcer Jack Whitaker, and CBS's The NFL Today. The ninth annual Sports Emmy Awards, hosted by actors Alan Thicke and Joan Van Ark and held on July 13, 1988, became the first Sports Emmys ceremony to be televised; the live telecast was syndicated nationwide by Raycom Sports. Dennis Miller hosted in the 12th Sports Emmys in 1991, which was broadcast on ESPN.

Rules[]

Among the Sports Emmy rules, a show must originally air on American television during the eligibility period between January 1 and December 31, and to at least 50 percent of the country.^[1] A show that enters into the Sports Emmys cannot also be entered into any other national Emmy competition. Certain shows and segments that air on sports networks that are more entertainment or news, including award shows, the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics, and the Super Bowl halftime show, are ineligible for the Sports Emmys.

Entries must be submitted by mid-January. Most award categories also require entries to include DVDs or tape masters of the show. For most program categories, the submitted DVDs should feature up to five excerpts. For most personality categories, there is no limit in the number of segments submitted, but the DVD should not run over a total of 12 minutes.^[1]

Voting is done by peer judging panels between February and early March. The Academy solicits anybody with significant experience in national sports production to serve as judges. The panels are organized so that they only have one representative from each corporate entity (i.e. CBS Corporation, Disney, NBCUniversal, Fox Corporation, WarnerMedia etc.) Most categories only have a single voting round using preferential scoring system. The top 5 entries in each category are announced as the "nominations", and then the top entry is announced as the Emmy winner later at the awards ceremony.^[1]

When a show wins a Sports Emmy, each member of the crew that worked on the production is eligible to purchase an Emmy statue, provided that their job title corresponds to the category that the show won the award in.^[2] This policy can result in many different people "winning" an Emmy for a single production; for example, when the Olympics on NBC wins an award for Outstanding Technical Team (Remote), as often occurs, the hundreds of personnel working on the production all have the right to purchase an Emmy statue.^[3] Depending on the production, the show or network that won the award will sometimes pay for the purchase of statues for the entire crew.

Categories[]

At that inaugural ceremony in 1979, there were 12 categories. The 36th ceremony in 2015 had 40 categories:

Outstanding Live Sports Special
Outstanding Live Sports Series
Outstanding Edited Sports Coverage
Outstanding Edited Sports Special
Outstanding Playoff Coverage
Outstanding Sports Documentary
Outstanding Sports Documentary Series
Outstanding Studio Show - Weekly
Outstanding Studio Show - Daily
Outstanding Sports News Anthology
Outstanding Sports Journalism
Outstanding Short Feature
Outstanding Long Feature
Outstanding Open/Tease
Outstanding New Approaches – Sports Event Coverage
Outstanding New Approaches – Sports Programming
Outstanding New Approaches – Sports Programming Short Format
Outstanding Sports Personality, Studio Host
Outstanding Sports Personality, Play-by-Play
Outstanding Sports Personality, Studio Analyst
Outstanding Sports Personality, Sports Event Analyst
Outstanding Sports Personality, Sports Reporter
Outstanding Technical Team Remote
Outstanding Technical Team Studio
Outstanding Camera Work
Outstanding Short Form Editing
Outstanding Long Form Editing
The Dick Schaap Outstanding Writing Award
Outstanding Music Composition/Direction/Lyrics
Outstanding Live Event Audio/Sound
Outstanding Post-Produced Audio/Sound
Outstanding Live Event Graphic Design
Outstanding Post-Produced Graphic Design
Outstanding Studio Design/Art Direction
Outstanding Production Design/Art Direction
The George Wensel Technical Achievement Award
Outstanding Sports Promotional Announcement
Outstanding Live Sports Coverage in Spanish
Outstanding Studio Show in Spanish
Outstanding On-Air Sports Personality in Spanish
Sports Lifetime Achievement Award

Defunct categories[]

Outstanding Host or Commentator
Outstanding Analyst
Outstanding Achievement In Content For Non-Traditional Delivery Platforms
- This award made its debut in 2006, and was given for content made especially for devices such as iPods and PDAs. It was replaced by the three subcategories for Outstanding Broadband, which are listed above.

Multiple wins by a Series[]

9 wins

NBC Sunday Night Football

8 wins

College GameDay
Inside the NBA
Monday Night Football

7 wins

NFL GameDay/Sunday NFL Countdown

6 wins

MLB Tonight

5 wins

Inside the NFL
NFL on CBS
The NFL Today

4 wins

CBS's coverage of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament
Fox NFL Sunday
Major League Baseball on Fox
NASCAR on Fox
SportsCenter

3 wins

Pardon the Interruption

2 wins

ESPN SpeedWorld
ESPN Sunday Night Football

Multiple wins by a Personality[]

23 wins

Bob Costas

16 wins

Cris Collinsworth
John Madden