Yesterday was ribbon-cutting day for ESPN’s new $175 million Digital Center in Bristol. Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was on hand. ESPN is big business in his state.

Below, ESPN president John Skipper and Malloy did a mock SportsCenter from the new studio. Skipper should keep his day job. Malloy, though, has some potential.

Dan Haar of the Hartford Courant reports on the new facility. It seems $175 million can buy a few bells and whistles.

Haar writes:

Once you get past Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and other politicians talking about jobs, and you’ve heard ESPNPresident John Skipper talk about how the network’s new Digital Center 2 brings amazing technology and people together, listen to Hannah Storm describe what the production palace will mean for viewers.

The longtime anchor and celebrity face of ESPN grows animated, striding out toward the main “SportsCenter” desk — where a huge video display built right into the floor shines light upward, toward a camera on a circular ceiling track.

Sure, it will be more fun and more efficient for ESPN’s personalities to broadcast from the $175 million building, with 6 million feet of fiber optic cable, 25,000 square feet of studio space, and a huge glass wall that looks out onto a glass “cube” with graphic artists sending images onto studio screens.

But, I ask Storm, will the viewers really see a change?

“It’s vastly different,” Storm said. “It will be a significant change, unlike anything on sports TV.”

Later Haar writes:

It’s twice as big as the old digital center, which will remain in use for several shows. And the new look ties together with the ESPN app and website.

Highlights of the studio include two giant vertical video screens — dynamic backdrops for studio anchors, reporters and guests. But, King said, the idea isn’t more complexity, it’s more boldness.

“We want to make sure that we’re not letting the screen dissolve into a lot of little type,” King said. “What happens on these screens is complementary to what the anchors are doing.”

What they’ll do is move around a techno-environment, perhaps a bit like the CNN interactive studio, only more so. It’s best left to ESPN’s press release to describe: “virtual technology, two touch screens, a 56 LED multidimensional monitor wall and the ability to do live and pre-produced segments simultaneously.”

“We always felt that the smaller set kept us sitting behind the desk,” King said. “The point really is to give people more of a sense of who we are.”

“I’m told it’s future-proofed,” Skipper crows, as the building has room for technology not yet invented.

No such thing, Mr. Skipper, but the new facility should suffice for quite a while.