Dennis Deninger

Dennis Deninger is an innovative educator and Emmy-award winning former television production executive and who has produced live sports television from six continents and across the USA. He is a professor of practice at Syracuse University where he was named Falk College Faculty Member of the Year for Excellence in Teaching in 2014. He was the founding director of the sports communications graduate program at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and has created several new graduate and undergraduate level courses at Syracuse, his alma mater.

Dennis Deninger is the author of Live Sports Media: The What, How and Why of Sports Broadcasting, published in 2022, and of Sports on Television, both published by Routledge Taylor and Francis of New York and London. He spent 25 years at ESPN leading production teams for studio programming, live remote events, and digital video platforms.

Dennis Deninger has won Emmy Awards for innovation in sports television, production on digital platforms, and educational television. He developed for American television the digital instant review technology called “Shot Spot” which is now in use at all major tennis tournaments.

He launched ESPN’s coverage of Wimbledon, the French Open, Major League Soccer and was the executive in charge of production for World Cup 1994, a dozen Australian Opens, Friday Night Fights, Triple Crown horse racing, and a multitude of other live events.

Deninger joined ESPN in October 1982 as the first Coordinating Producer for SportsCenter and held that position until 1986. That was the year he created the Scholastic Sports America series, which continued for 15 years on ESPN. During the course of his career at ESPN, Dennis Deninger launched more than a dozen new televised series and events including Major League Soccer and the National Spelling Bee. He was head of production for ESPN Digital where he created the most successful daily sports video series in the history of the internet, SportsCenter Right Now.

Dennis Deninger has written and directed documentaries working with his students at Syracuse University as the research team. America’s First Sport premiered in 2013 which was broadcast across the US on the ESPN networks. The film explores the history, culture and rapid expansion of lacrosse in the US and around the world. In 2014, Changing Sports, Changing Lives was released. The film focuses on the sports that have been adapted for persons with disabilities, and how these sports have impacted their lives.

In 2017, he began producing a series of first-person documentary films entitled Orange Immortals which tell the life stories of greats from Syracuse University sports history. Deninger also wrote, produced and directed the biographical documentary Agent of Change: David Falk, which aired on ESPN2 in the summer of 2016.

Deninger’s comments and analysis have been quoted in national and international media including The New York Times, Forbes, USA Today, ABC News, CNN, Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, the International Business Times, The Guardian, the Sporting News and the NFL Network. Additionally, he has done consulting for China Central Television, guest lectured at Beijing Sports University, and does professional performance coaching for sports talent in the US.