The event will air on the Disney owned free-to-air platform ABC on Sunday, August 18 from 7-9pm ET, part of 20 hours, in addition to extensive live coverage on the ESPN and ESPN2 cable channels. European coverage of the action sports competition, scheduled for August 15-19 in Philadelphia, will run on Eurosport.
ESPN International, which owns or operates 25 television networks outside of the United States, will televise X Games VIII to more than 113 million households in over 140 countries and territories early next month. In addition, ESPN has syndication agreements with terrestrial broadcasters in Brazil (Globo), Great Britain (BBC, C5), Japan (NHK, FUJI-TV) and Spain (TV 3). Eurosport, serving more than 54 countries and 90 million households, will also televise X Games VIII in September.
"The X Games has become an international phenomenon," said Mark Reilly, vice president and general manager, Global X Games. "It's a tribute to the X Games franchise and to the millions of action sports fans around the world that we can make it available to more television viewers than ever before."
ESPN's X Games franchise currently includes events in the US and around the world. In addition to the Winter X Games and X Games, which are held in the US, ESPN stages annual international X Games competitions in Latin America, Europe, and Asia, including a six-stop Asian Xtour. In 2003, ESPN will debut the X Games Global Championship, an event which will feature six teams representing different regions of the world - the US, Europe, Canada, South America, Asia and Australia - with the goal of crowning one of them the X Games Champion.
