This is SportsCenter: Jason Sudeikis hosts special tonight ranking ESPN’s best ads in campaign

Tonight at 8 p.m. ET, Jason Sudeikis, now formerly of Saturday Night Live, examines the best of the best from ESPN’s legendary “This is SportsCenter” campaign. Preview below.

From Tim Nudd of Ad Week:

ESPN’s “This Is SportsCenter” is among the handful of classic sports ad campaigns of all time. Launched in 1995 by Wieden + Kennedy in New York, the campaign—originally inspired by the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap—hasn’t changed much over the years. And why would it? You don’t mess with a winning formula.

The premise of the ads, as we’ve noted before, is that ESPN’s Bristol, Conn., offices are the center of the sports universe—a surreal yet mundane fantasy world where athletes and mascots live and work together with anchors and journalists. Where other marketers portray athletes as superhuman, “This Is SportsCenter” presents them as comically, relatably human. Eighteen years and more than 400 spots later, the campaign continues.

There have been so many good ones. I always loved the ad featuring the young anchor drafted out of high school who couldn’t handle it emotionally.

“Jimmy Key? What’s he like 45? I could hit him.”

Of it’s hard to top the epic John Clayton ad.

One thought on “This is SportsCenter: Jason Sudeikis hosts special tonight ranking ESPN’s best ads in campaign

  1. The Y2K ad with Charley Steiner in survival garb, yelling, “Follow me to freedom!” is one of my all time faves.

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