ESPN Inadvertently Gave Fox's New Rival Sports Network Tons Of Free Advertising

ESPNUnfortunately for ESPN, Wednesday night's game between the Pirates and A's was delayed by rain which led to ESPN promoting a new rival network over and over and over again.

The game in Pittsburgh was delayed for nearly three hours. To fill the time, ESPN showed other games around Major League Baseball, many of which were being broadcast on Fox Sports regional networks.

Those networks are currently in an all-out blitz promoting the new Fox Sports 1 network which will debut in August and is intended to be a rival to ESPN. As a result a large promo for Fox Sports 1 and its launch date splashed across ESPN screens all night.

In just one hour, we saw the promo five times. Maybe next time ESPN should think about using a delay and cut-away since the promos never appeared while the ball was in play.

Here are some more examples...

ESPN

ESPN