ESPN 30 For 30’s Hillsborough Nominated for Primetime Emmy, Doesn’t Win

Last month, the 30 for 30 documentary, Hillsborough, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Hillsborough, about the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy involving the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans and the subsequent police coverup over the past 25 years, was nominated with Brave Miss World (Netflix), The Amish: Shunned (PBS) and Life According to Sam (HBO). This past weekend, Hillsborough’s Emmy category was announced during the Creative Arts Emmys where it lost out to Life According to Sam.

If you haven’t watched Hillsborough yet, do yourself a favor and watch it now. It was one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. The beauty of the documentary is that it makes you feel how the victims have felt throughout the movie. You feel sadness and want to cry, you feel anger toward the incompetent police officials and lack of government action for all that time, you feel helpless when it has been a couple decades with no end in sight at exposing the truth and you feel relief when after 25 years, there’s a small light at the end of the tunnel. We as the viewer experience that in a couple hours, the victims families had to experience that and more the last 25 years and will experience that for the rest of their lives.

Even though Hillsborough didn’t win at the Emmy’s, its a huge achievement for a sports programming to be nominated for any sort of Hollywood awards. Sports movies found limited success at the Oscars with movies like Grand Prix, Rocky and The Blind Side but largely failed to even be noticed on those stages. Hillsborough, a soccer movie, being nominated for an Emmy Award is in itself, an achievement. Hopefully, this bit of publicity can open this compelling story to a new audience.

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @phillipbupp

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