ESPN Deportes has obtained the Spanish-language rights to air Super Bowl 50 in a pact with CBS and the National Football League. The telecast begins at 6 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 7, live from Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
This is the first Super Bowl telecast for ESPN Deportes, and it will feature the announcing team that has called Monday Night Football contests since 2006 (and Sunday Night Football games before that): Alvaro Martin on play by play, Raul Allegre doing analysis and sideline reporter John Sutcliffe.
While Fox Deportes had the first Spanish-language Super Bowl telecast in 2014, alongside Fox, and NBC Universo had it in 2015 (renaming itself from mun2 on the same day) alongside NBC, CBS did not have an in-house Spanish-language sports partner to call on. In a release from CBS, the NFL and ESPN Deportes, CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said "as the broadcaster of Super Bowl 50, it was a priority for us to find a Spanish-language partner to televise this historic broadcast and reach the NFL’s Hispanic fan base.” ESPN Deportes lists its distribution at 6.1 Hispanic homes, with total distribution of about 20 million homes, a smaller base than NBC Universo (43 million homes) but similar to Fox Deportes (22 million homes).
ESPN Deportes is planning multimedia coverage leading up to the big game starting on Monday, Feb. 1. On Super Bowl Sunday, the network's coverage also will include a pregame special at 4:30 p.m. and a postgame show. ESPN Deportes Radio will broadcast the Super Bowl in Spanish for the third consecutive year under a separate agreement with the NFL.
