If you thought the ESPN8: The Ocho gimmick had run its course for the Worldwide Leader, think again.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, ESPN announced that 30 new sports<\/a> will be making their ESPN8: The Ocho debut as the ESPN family of networks prepares wall-to-wall coverage of unconventional sports competitions from Thursday, July 31 to Sunday, August 3. It\u2019s the ninth year<\/a> ESPN has set aside a chunk of summer programming to pay homage to\u00a0Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the film that introduced ESPN8: The Ocho to the world.<\/p>\n Some of the notable sports making their Ocho debut include \u201cCoffin Wars,\u201d \u201cGoat Racing Championships,\u201d \u201c2025 Bubble Gum Blowing Championship,\u201d \u201cT-Rex World Championship Races,\u201d and dozens of other niche sports that you had no clue existed.<\/p>\n In total, ESPN will air over 65 hours of Ocho programming throughout the weekend. The vast majority will be housed on ESPN2, with certain competitions like a Savannah Bananas game and the American Cornhole League World Championship getting the main ESPN treatment.<\/p>\n Fan favorites like ultimate frisbee and kickball also return this year.<\/p>\n ESPN will also utilize its Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Florida to bring a number of live competitions to viewers. 11 events, including Major League Paintball and the Pop-A-Shot National Championship, will be played on-site and air live. Clinton Yates, Arda \u00d6cal, and Cristina Alexander will host\u00a0The Ocho Show from Orlando to offer interviews with some of the competitors.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to blame ESPN for leaning into The Ocho at this point. There\u2019s the nostalgia factor, of course, given that\u00a0Dodgeball came out in 2004. But, also, there\u2019s not much other programming out there this time of year anyway. Might as well sacrifice one weekend of ESPN2\u2019s schedule to have a bit of fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you thought the ESPN8: The Ocho gimmick had run its course for the Worldwide Leader, think again.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":68259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,48345,48346,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-68258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-espn8","10":"tag-espn8-the-ocho","11":"tag-tv","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114865235846278036","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}