RENO, Nev. – For the first time, University of Nevada football games will be broadcast this year in Spanish on the newest partner with Wolf Pack athletics – Exitos 1550 AM, athletics director Cary Groth and Wolf Pack Sports Properties announced Monday.
All seven of the Wolf Pack’s home games will be carried on the station. The broadcast team of Carlos Martinez (play-by-play) and Miguel Mina (analyst) will handle the broadcast. Martinez is a Reno native who grew up following Wolf Pack football, while Mina played American football at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico, a university in Mexico City.
“The opportunity to expand the reach of Nevada football to the Spanish-speaking population in Northern Nevada is a major part of our ‘One Community, One Pack’ concept,” said Cary Groth, Nevada’s Director of Athletics. “We are happy to have Exitos 1550 AM as part of the Wolf Pack family.”
“We are very excited to be the bridge between our University and the Latino community,” Mina said.
A recent nationwide poll, sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, showed that Latinos spend, in a number of cases, several hours consuming Spanish-language media. That includes nearly 90 percent of Hispanics who mostly speak Spanish who watched TV and about 75 percent who listened to Spanish radio. The poll also found that among Latinos who spoke mostly English, about 4 in 10 said they turned to either Spanish TV or Spanish radi for news, entertainment and sports.
“I am excited that Wolf Pack football will be able to reach more people in Northern Nevada. We have a challenging season ahead of us and we’re appreciative of the support from the community,” head coach Chris Ault said.
Nevada is now one of four Western Athletic Conference schools that have Spanish-language broadcasts for one or more sports. It is believed that the first broadcast on Thursday, Sept. 2 of Nevada against Eastern Washington will be the first-ever Spanish-language broadcast of a college football game originating from Nevada or UNLV.
“We’re very excited to form this new partnership with Exitos 1550 AM, which enables us for the first time to add a Spanish radio station to our existing statewide network,” said Andy McDowell, general manager of Wolf Pack Sports Properties. “This will automatically provide us a greater reach to Wolf Pack fans who can benefit from hearing games broadcast in Spanish, while at the same time, better assist the University in its overall marketing and outreach initiatives.”
Wolf Pack Sports Properties, which is a property of Learfield Sports and Seismic Events, holds the radio rights to Wolf Pack Athletics. In addition to Nevada, other WAC member schools represented by Learfield Sports are Idaho, Fresno State, San Jose State and Utah State. Dallas-based Learfield Sports is an operating unit of Jefferson City, Mo.-based Learfield Communications, Inc., which made its initial foray into the world of sports marketing in 1975 as the radio rights holder for the University of Missouri, a client still today. In addition to managing multimedia rights for more than 50 collegiate institutions and associations, Learfield Sports manages the marketing partnerships for the Black Coaches & Administrators (BCA), provides exclusive sports programming to more than 1,000 radio stations nationwide and titles the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup.
-- un equipo, una comunidad --
