By its own proclamation, Fox Sports is rolling out the most sophisticated high-tech bells and whistles ever to be deployed for a Mid-Summer Classic at MLB’s annual All-Star Game in Minneapolis.

Whether or not these new special effects will translate into viewers remains to be seen. Last year, the All-Star Game improved a tick, but was still the third-lowest in viewers this millennium.

Among the new features is SideTrax, a system from Hawkeye Technology that’s also been used in tennis coverage as well as at this year’s World Cup. SideTrax graphically depicts the baseball as it moves through the strike zone from the side and gives a view of the ball moving through a 3-D strike zone that hovers above home plate.

The Diamond Cam feature, positioned in-ground in front of home, will appear for the first time in high definition. Fox also will bring its N-Cam optical tracking technology, used in studio production as well as for the Super Bowl and Daytona 500, to the All-Star Game. The game features Fox’s Super Zoom 4K cameras, which capture pictures with five times the resolution of a normal HD camera. If that wasn’t enough of a technology blitz, 36 HD cameras will be positioned around Target Field as well.

“The lighting [at Target Field] is perfect for television and showing the new technology with the high-speed cameras and tracking,” said Fox Sports President and Chief Operating Officer Eric Shanks, on a conference call with media Tuesday. “It’s probably one of the better places that you could try to implement these features.”

On the mobile side, the Fox Sports Go app will offer the first-ever live stream of the game for iOS devices. The app can be downloaded free from the iTunes Store and Google Play. The app will feature two separate streams of the telecast, one in English and one in Spanish from Fox Sports Deportes.

Of course, there’s also the hope that the game itself draws fans’ interest. This year, there’s no shortage of story lines, beginning with the final All-Star Game for Yankee great Derek Jeter. Shanks says the Fox team will ask Jeter to be one of the players who is mic’ed up during the game. Last year, in-game ratings peaked in the eighth inning when another Bronx hero, Mariano Rivera, took the mound for his final All-Star Game appearance.

Other intriguing stories this year include the presence of young stars, such as the Angels’ Mike Trout and Los Angeles’ Yasiel Puig.

“Those two guys, to me, are two of the top three or five players in the game,” says Fox Sports’ analyst Tom Verducci, who will call his first All-Star Game along side Harold Reynolds (1st) and Joe Buck (16th). “The[se are the] type of players where you put off a trip to the bathroom or the concession stand when they come to the plate.”

Buck’s father, the legendary Jack Buck, called the first All-Star Game to be held in Minnesota in 1965 on NBC. His son will be calling his first All-Star Game with his new partners and without longtime broadcaster Tim McCarver. Approaching the half-way mark of the season with the new team, Buck was highly-complementary.

“This is the most enjoyable first half of a season that I can remember,” Buck says. “I can’t wait to get to the ball park, I leave with a smile on my face. This is the best broadcast I’ve been a part of for a lot of reasons, but certainly because of the two analysts.”

On the sponsorship side, baseball didn’t lose any major sponsors this year, with a big addition being Target, in part, based on the appeal of the All-Star Game being held at Target Field. The retail giant has a number of marketing initiatives around the game, including sponsoring the All-Star Concert on Saturday (July 12) ahead of the game. The show features Imagine Dragons and Atmosphere and is presented by Budweiser. A post-concert fireworks show is sponsored by Firestone.

All-Star FanFest, sponsored by T-Mobile, begins Friday and lasts until the game itself starts. Nike sponsors a Color Run on Sunday, while Taco Bell hosts the All-Star Sunday and the Futures Game being sponsored by SiriusXM. Pepsi, Chevy, Gatorade and Gillette are all major sponsors of events throughout the festivities as well.

On the ratings side, last year’s game improved a bit with a 6.9/12 rating and 11 million viewers, but it’s still significantly lower than the mid-to-high teens ratings in the 1990s and nothing close to the 27.1/53 and 36 million viewers that watched the 1976 game in Philadelphia.

Shanks addressed Fox’s slightly-lower ratings for its national Saturday games, saying the network opted this year to air fewer games each day, hoping to draw national interest in the game’s emerging stars and airing less in regional markets.

“We want more people to see more of these young stars,” Shanks said. “We realized early on you’re going to get fewer home markets participating in the ratings…we believe it will pay off in the long run for things like the All-Star Game.”

Much like the prospect-heavy Chicago Cubs, baseball fans and TV executives will have to wait to see if their strategy pays off.

Image courtesy of ESPN.com.

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