As far as i know only the USOC final is broadcast, and on FSC. Personally i hate FSC. it's a channel that Fox can trash all their coverage of soccer on. I Don't even get FSC on DirecTV. i'm ok with all the early rounds on FSC but it would be good if they could put the Semis and the Final on real channels. Maybe on Fox sports Net or NBC sports, or ESPN2.
Yeah, damn them for having that crap soccer like the EPL and Champions League on their channel! Yet, you hate it. Awesome. From your lips to...nobody's ears. "All the early rounds" aren't going to be on anywhere, so good luck. And maybe they'll ask YOU what qualifies as a "real channel" when they are looking to put fantastically awesome Tuesday night at 10pm ET programming on. Because NBC Sports or ESPN2 would just frigging love to bid on that.
Has any team's local cable tv partner in the league broadcast these games? I'm pretty sure no DC United USOC game has ever been televised other than 2 of the finals they were in.
Having your parent company own Sky and throwing lots of money doesn't equal a quality product. ESPN's matches are always far an away better anything Sky and to a lesser extent FOX ever does. I was deeply saddened when FSC won the Champions League. This resulted with getting stuck with Anglophile match-ups when there were far better matches to watch. At least ESPN put the other CL games on a free video service.
Now that FSC doesn't have the MLS contract I wonder if they would consider putting on a match or two though...... the potential for a LA v. NY matchup is there, and those teams would be meeting only one time in regular season play next year.... there is potentially some incentive.
That would be nice. I will assume it would be somewhere between the Round of 16 to the Final if both sides are still in it.
They'd have to have a contract with USSF, though. And I believe FSC's contract with USSF has expired, which is why you're not seeing the national teams on TV on FSC anytime soon. FSC couldn't just say "You know, I think we'll just decide to put on 'a match or two' when it suits us," and, for USSF's purposes, early round matches on TV don't do much good (nor do they for a network). And a New York/LA matchup, on a Tuesday night (potentially at 10pm ET) might not be worth doing a series of matches just on the chance you might get that matchup. In the early 2000s, more than just the final were on. FSC televised a Chicago/LA semifinal from Naperville in 2003, and a Chicago/Pittsburgh quarterfinal match from 2001 was on regionally. If you're talking semifinals, or perhaps even a quarterfinal or two, with MLS teams involved, I could see someone doing that as part of a package, maybe. But only if it also included the final. Unless Seattle or Portland or somebody is going to make the final every year, you take your chances with the crowd at the final. Prior to DC's push for 2009 that resulted in a 17k crowd, the final had averaged <10k. The last two years may have blinded some to that reality. Also, as far as a blind draw goes, I'm in favor of whatever mechanism can force teams to leave their narrow geographic area to win a tournament if it's going to be meaningful, but also I'm mindful of the economic reality and the fixture congestion. If you say to me, "I don't think it's fair that Seattle, DC and Rochester have these incredibly long strings of home matches in the Open Cup and that should be minimized," I'm right there with you. But if you say (or if you say the above, but you're really saying) "I just want the Open Cup to look exactly like the FA Cup," you're no better than the proles who insist on promotion and relegation so MLS looks like Europe, and reality be damned. The Open Cup cannot be what the FA Cup is. Our country is too big, the disparity between divisions is huge and you're not going to force the market to care about this tournament by putting it on TV and pretending it's really, really cool. I agree with what Hanauer said in the TheCup.us piece: there needs to be a plan. This tournament can't go on as it has, kind of haphazardly, with changing formats and occasional spikes and lapses in coverage. But it's really, really hard to convince a TV outlet that they should broadcast games from Ocean City, New Jersey on a Tuesday night in June, no matter how much you love the charm of the Open Cup. It's really, really hard to schedule Open Cup matches on weekends and have teams potentially give up lucrative weekend dates (of which there is a finite number) on the chance they'll have to play a USOC match that day on short notice instead of a league match with six months notice. And as for the FS+ that Daniel is so in love with: you know you have to pay extra for that, right? It's like $15 extra a month, isn't it? So you'd be shunting these games off to a channel that even fewer people get than FSC proper and ain't nobody going to pony up just so they can watch the Open Cup. Not happening. And this notion that you can just "convince" a sponsor to take a flier on this thing...that's not going to be easy. Sponsors like eyeballs. I don't know who would invest in a significant way in a Tuesday night summer soccer tournament.
Really? $15 bucks extra? I wasn't told that. It just popped up on my cable box and I've been getting it for free since this past June. The truth. I'm getting FS+ for nothing. But that might be from where I am in the country.
Do webcasts. Create a channel for Roku, Boxee, AppleTV, etc. and an app for iOS. Probably the only way any pre-final coverage would work. Minimal investment on the front end and allows the niche audience that exists a few places to find the content.
$14.99 per month (link). It's basically the old Setanta, isn't it? Daniel, are you stealing cable? Are you running a wire to the neighbor's house? There are some webcasts of USOC games involving USL teams, but you'd think it would only be a matter of time before you could get most of them online. There are some early-round games in places where you're simply not going to be able to make it work logistically, and the quality is going to be haphazard. But for the first couple of rounds, if you wanted to get webcasts done, I would think you could get many of them. It's a relatively minimal investment (as compared to TV), but somebody still has to pay the freight.
You can watch all NASL games on U-stream, maybe they will also stream the Open cup games they get to host.
You'd hope, right? That would take care of a certain number of them. Some USL Pro teams are pretty good about streaming. I think Wilmington, Harrisburg and Rochester were tops in that regard last year. Orlando started off doing it, but was haphazard after that. You're not going to get it out of Richmond or Charlotte, but Dayton and LA did a few matches last year.
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH You're giving my secret away. Honestly. I looked up my Channel guide that one night in June of 2011 and saw where Fox Soccer + is. Just gave it a shot and there it was. I honestly thought a free preview, but it wasn't. I've had it since then, so it's some special deal with Cablevision NYC, NJ, CT that I don't have to pay extra or something. Watching the other Carling Cup Semi-Final 1st leg between Man City & Liverpool and this past Sat. I saw Blackpool win in thier 3rd round FA Cup match against Fleetwood Town.