By Eugenia Ruiz (@EugeniaR_)
The Wild Card round gave us interesting games, others boring, but especially it gave us the opportunity to see a new experiment within the NFL: the game between the New Orleans Saints and the Chicago Bears narrated and commented specifically for children through Nickelodeon.
Beyond the original and funny moments of the broadcast, the best thing about this experiment is the approach aimed at an audience that is not so familiar with American football and that does not handle the statistics and analytics approach as much. Nickelodeon achieved something that is very important to attract a greater audience and that the NFL and traditional broadcasts often forget: to make the game entertaining and digestible.
The comments and criticisms of the broadcast were very good, but above all, they highlight the importance of having friendly broadcasts with all types of audiences and makes us consider the possibility of having something similar in Spanish soon.
I am not saying that we need to see a simile of SpongeBob between the posts or “slime” in the end zone, but to move away a little from the statistics and technical issues to open an option to the Spanish-speaking public to understand the basic notions of the sport and allow fall in love with this in a simple and unpretentious way.
One of the greatest successes of this experiment was that, far from having a condescending tone towards children, Noah Eagle, Nate Burleson and Gabrielle Nevaeh Green made you feel as if you were in a conversation with your friends and they were explaining you step by step what is happening so that you could understand everything more easily.
Although traditional narratives work perfect to analyze the game much further, it is also necessary to contemplate a way to make the sport more friendly for those who intend to start watching it, but under the current format could feel very overwhelming.
Hopefully we will see this experiment repeated in the following seasons and, one day, in a Spanish version.
