ESPN BottomLine

The ESPN BottomLine is the main on-screen graphic that constantly and immediately updates the scores of various North American sporting events.

The general BottomLine is used to update sports scores and news. There are also specific customized versions that are used on some programs, particularly those on ESPN.

History
The Bottom Line began as "BottomLine2" on ESPN2 on March 1, 1996. At first, it updated only game scores and aired between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m. Eastern time Monday through Friday and noon through 3 a.m. on weekends. By 1999, the hours were extended to 24 hours a day and news items were added.

On September 7, 2001 (coincidentally, the 22nd anniversary of ESPN's launch), ESPNEWS began an expanded three-line version with tabs showing the current and upcoming categories, as well as the progress within each category. In 2003, ESPN and ESPN2 added modified versions of what was shown on ESPNEWS.

Usage
*On ESPN, the programs with the general version of the Bottom Line are SportsCenter, 1st and 10, Jim Rome is Burning, and Outside the Lines. Specific versions air on such programs as Baseball Tonight, NBA Fastbreak, College GameDay, College GameNight, and College Football Live, as well as during college football and basketball telecasts. These custom versions show only results from the specific sports as well as expanded information. This is in addition to updates that ESPN displays at 18 and 58 minutes past the hour during all other programming.
*On ESPN2, the general version airs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with changes from day to day uploaded at about noon Eastern time.
*ESPN Classic, like ESPN2, has the general version. However, the ticker does not appear when ESPN Classic airs a sports-themed movie under the title Reel Classics. These showings occur on Sunday nights and usually repeats on Monday afternoons. Some showings do have a version called "Reel Classics Extra," with a line of information that can be compared to the Bottom Line.
*The ESPNU version, which also airs constantly, includes mainly college sports scores and news.
*ESPN Deportes has a version called "ESPN Al Instante," with score and news updates of the sports most relevant to Hispanic sports fans.
*ESPN on ABC, the broadcast arm of the network, also has a version, with the look of the bottom right-hand corner dependent on the feed. On the standard definition feed, the corner is solid red with no logo; a large network "circle logo" appears right above it. On the ABC HD feed, the ABC HD insignia is placed in that corner. This ticker also promotes upcoming primetime programs on ABC.
*ESPNEWS uses a different format of the BottomLine, instead of having the games in horizontal format (road team on left and the home team on the right), ESPNEWS uses a vertical format (road teams on top and the home teams on bottom). This format allows more information to be shown in less time, but takes up more space than the other versions.

Additional notes
*During the Monday Night Football season, and before certain other major sports events, ESPN will air a countdown clock to the airtime for that event.
*If a game runs over into the scheduled SportsCenter time slot, the SportsCenter BottomLine will be displayed even before the program does, except during National Football League games or NASCAR races.
*Occasionally, the stream will be interrupted by a promotional announcement, an update on programming that has been pre-empted by the continuation of a live sporting event, or by breaking news.
*The ESPNEWS and ESPNU bottom lines do not leave the screen during commercial breaks; however, viewers will not see them when their cable or satellite providers go to local ads. The tickers are also continuous during Mike and Mike in the Morning and ESPN First Take.
*If ESPN has signed a financial deal with a title sponsor of an event or the presenting sponsor of a telecast, that sponsor's name will appear on the ticker in connection to the results. For example, "Pacific Life Holiday Bowl", "Australian Open presented by Franklin Templeton Investments", or "Phillips 66 Big 12 men's basketball tournament." (However, the women's tournament, which is shown on Fox Sports Net, is referred to only as the Big 12 tournament.)
*Other restrictions may also come into play. For example, in March 2007, results of the 2007 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament was presented as "2007 NCAA Women's Championship presented on ESPN by Orbitz." However, the results of the 2007 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament were presented only as "2007 Men's Championship," without the organization's initials. The men's tournament is shown entirely on CBS, except for the opening round game on ESPN. This changed for the "Sweet 16" round on March 24, with the NCAA letters removed from the ticker without explanation when leading to the women's scores. The Orbitz mention remained. However, the NCAA letters returned, again, for the Final Four weekend. Similarly, the names of NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series and Busch Series races are no longer shown on the ticker, unless the title sponsor pays an additional fee to the network (such as Allstate, which is the title sponsor for the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard), or unless it is a major event like the Daytona 500. This is part of the new contract signed between NASCAR and ESPN which returned live Cup races to ESPN and ABC and gave ESPN2 and ABC rights to televise all Busch Series races. (Craftsman Truck Series races, which are shown on SPEED Channel and Fox, are still named on the BottomLine.)
*For the 2007 Major League Baseball season, ESPN began to alternate among three different formats to present information. The first only shows game scores, the second expands to include highlighted individual performances (as relevant for players of fantasy baseball), and the third expands even more to show the winning and losing pitchers as well. NBA and NHL results are now shown in a similar format, with scores only on one pass followed by individual statistics on the next.
*During the 2006 and 2007 MLB seasons, the order of baseball games shown on the ticker changed, mainly to reflect Barry Bonds' pursuit of baseball's home run record. Prior to the 2006 season, the regular order consisted of American League games appearing before National League games, but from most of the 2006 season through August 7, 2007 (when Bonds hit his 756th career home run, breaking Henry Aaron's record), NL games appeared before AL games, and games involving the San Francisco Giants, the team whom Bonds played for, appeared before all others. On August 8, 2007, the reverse order of games (NL before AL) reverted back to the regular order (AL before NL).
**Similarly, on November 4, 2007, the score of the game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts (the Patriots won 24-20) was displayed before all others, despite this being a late-afternoon kickoff, thus disrupting the normal order. This was because the game was the latest meeting ever of two undefeated teams in the National Football League.
*From November 28 to December 4, 2007, the BottomLine hosted an unofficial telethon to raise money for the Jimmy V Foundation. Every few minutes, all the incarnations of the ticker on all networks carried this message: "Join ESPN and the Jimmy V Foundation in the fight against cancer." This was followed by a toll-free telephone number and website that accepted donations for the charity, which was founded in 1993 in the name of the late college basketball head coach and ESPN/ABC color analyst Jim Valvano.
*On December 13, 2007, a single breaking news event, the Mitchell Report (on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball) was a BottomLine category. The "MITCHELL" heading detailed the names of current and former players accused of using the drugs, selected developments found in the report, and George Mitchell's recommendations. It was the first news story to get its own category.
*Also in December 2007, the Patriots, who had not lost a game at that point, received their own section, "PATRIOTS," in anticipation of a possible undefeated regular season. Only once has it happened so far in NFL history: the 1972 Miami Dolphins. The section shows the team's record and updated information.

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