KCOP-TV - Sports Coverage

Sports Coverage

From 2006 until the end of the 2011 Major League Baseball season, KCOP held the television broadcasting rights to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball team; the team and Fox Sports West signed a 20-year broadcast deal beginning with the 2012 season, making 150 annual Angels telecasts exclusive to Fox Sports West, with a selected portion of that schedule airing on Prime Ticket, although it aired a match between the Angeles and the Minnesota Twins on May 9, 2012 due to both Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket having full schedules. Before that, channel 13 was the broadcasting home of the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2002 to 2005, the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers from 1991 to 1996, and the Los Angeles Marathon 1986 to 2001.

From 2005 to 2007, KCOP carried St. Louis Rams preseason games produced by corporate sibling Fox Sports Midwest and now-former sister station KTVI. It was considered a throwback of sorts, because back in the 1950s during the team's early years in Los Angeles, the station broadcast many Rams regular season games before NFL games became more exclusive to the major broadcasting networks (such as CBS, NBC, and DuMont). However, according to a July 2008 article in Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, the NFL's broadcast committee decided to no longer allow teams to broadcast preseason games beyond even their secondary markets. This was done moreso to protect the league's broadcast partners, including those of KCBS-TV and KTLA, the respective local broadcasters of the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders preseason games.

Like many local stations in the earlier years of television, KCOP hosted its own Studio Wrestling show every week for many years during the 1970s. Stars such as Freddie Blassie, John Tolos, Rocky Johnson, André the Giant, and The Sheik headlined the shows, with longtime local announcer Dick Lane behind the microphone calling the action. In later years, pro wrestling returned to KCOP by way of World Wrestling Entertainment's Smackdown show, which aired on the station from 1999 to 2006 (when it was a UPN affiliate) and again from 2008 to 2010 (as a MyNetworkTV affiliate). In the past, Channel 13 also aired other wrestling programs, including World Class Championship Wrestling and from the NWA.

Channel 13 also televised live boxing matches, originating from the Grand Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, on and off from the late 1960s until as recently as the mid-1990s, with legendary Los Angeles sportscaster Jim Healy calling the blow-by-blow action in the early years.

Due to its relationship with corporate siblings Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket, KCOP has served as an overflow channel for the two regional sports networks, as it added coverage of five Los Angeles Kings hockey games during the 2010–11 season, as well as televising selected late-season games from the 2011-12 season, plus the first two games of the Kings' first-round playoff series against the Vancouver Canucks.

On April 8, 2011, KCOP televised its first Clippers game since 1996 (a road game versus the Dallas Mavericks), as a last-minute scheduling addition to the team's television schedule. During the 2011-12 season, also as a last-minute addition, the station televised two Clipper games; a road contest versus the Denver Nuggets on April 18, and game six of their playoff series versus the Memphis Grizzlies on May 11.