Sugar Bowl: ESPN’s Split Screen Presentation Receives Backlash From Fans

The Sugar Bowl was the prime-time game on New Year’s Day and fans had a number of ways to watch […]

January 2, 2020, 12:05pm

The Sugar Bowl was the prime-time game on New Year’s Day and fans had a number of ways to watch the matchup between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Baylor Bears. On ESPN2, fans could watch the game via split-screen and that did not sit well with them. As soon as the game kicked off, fans went to Twitter to complain about the split-screen broadcast because there was too much going on. The fans that were complaining about the split-screen wanted to just watch the game and not worry about anything else.

“Please stop with the split-screen at the Sugar Bowl please,” one fan wrote on Twitter. “Unless I can learn to have my left eye focus on the left screen and my right eye focus on the right, in which case this is absolutely brilliant.”

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“[ESPN] is making it impossible to watch the #SugarBowl with the continual split screen,” another fan wrote. “Watching [HGTV] instead. Who had this stupid idea? Who approved it, which is worse!”

Whoever thought of the split screen for Sugar Bowl on ESPN needs to be fired.
— Martha Y. Flowers (@hartflo63) January 2, 2020

@espn can we do something about this split screen for sugar bowl?
— Derek Madden (@dmadden21) January 2, 2020

So, you can watch the #SugarBowl on @ESPN 2 with the stupid split screen but with good sound, or you can watch @Espn traditional channel with one screen and crowd noise so loud that you can’t hear the announcers. What a tremendous FAIL @ESPN.
— Kay Fairchild (@tisiddk) January 2, 2020

Fans also said the split-screen brought nothing to the table. And the longer fans watch the split-screen broadcast of the Sugar Bowl, the more annoyed they got with ESPN.

What is this split screen thing for the #SugarBowl, it’s giving me a headache….
— Corey Calhoun (@coreyonradio) January 2, 2020

@espn the split screen approach for the Sugar Bowl is lousy. Too many long shots of nothing
— Edgar Alvarez (@october51) January 2, 2020

As mentioned, the split-screen was one of the few ways fans could watch the Sugar Bowl. If fans didn’t like watching the split-screen on ESPN2, they could have switched over the ESPN and watched the game the traditional way. Because of that, it’s very likely ESPN will continue with their split-screen option as it’s not the only way to watch the game.