2014 NWSL Season - TV and Streaming (Thread)

This part I have mixed feelings about. I'd love to have the games on tv, but I would like to have them online as well. What I'd like to see happen is for all the games on TV to be posted on YouTube a couple days after so fans who don't have the station airing the matches can still see them.

 

Me too. But I'd say just keep the local production for those games and (if they must*) geo-block them so that the US can't watch them live, but all the international viewers can still watch it live. And then let the US viewers watch the replay 24 hours later.

* I know I'd watch the TV broadcast over the web stream any day, so I don't think it would hurt them for it to be available simultaneously online.

 

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-mls-soccer-tv-rights-20140512-story.html

wow. no mention at all of nwsl. or did I miss it?

or maybe they were concentrating too much on getting this deal done to bother with an nwsl contract.

can we get busy on that now?

 

NWSL wasn't part of the deal. Cheryl Bailey mentioned at the Sky Blue game last week NWSL had its own TV deal in the works and should be announced this week.

 

i guess we'll have to own it that without the clout of the other members of the soccer family it will be an ugly step sister deal.

 

For the MLS this is great. Sunday will be the leagues National TV day so everyone will know when it will be on. Likelyy keeping saturdays as the main day on the schedule with clubs being televised with their local broadcaster.
For those who like to bash the MLS National TV numbers havng just the two National games of the week on sundays will not have fans drawn to their home team and their local broadcaster

 

Considering what a weak draw the NWSL is at the moment, I'm not surprised USSF didn't want to bundle it and potentially lessen the value of the NT games.

 

I just hope the NWSL doesn't have to pay for them to be broadcasted. Might as well just keep it on YouTube in that case.

 

WPS paid for its FOX broadcasts, as did NWSL last season. Until NWSL starts being a good draw (either in the stands and/or for sponsors) they'll be paying for any TV contract they get, I'm afraid.

 

Then they should keep it to YouTube. There really isn't enough exposure from the games being on Fox Sports 2 or Fox Soccer Plus to make it worth it, IMHO.

 

Besides the National TV, the Thorns also have a local deal with CSN ( Comcast Sports NorthWest) for a few games. I'm pretty sure they aren't paying for them. Judging from previous local tv deals, they might even glean a little, if only in some commercial rights.

http://www.rosecitysoccerpress.com/...horns-home-matches-broadcast-locally-csn.html


The only issue is that, similar to the Blazers, 3 of the 4 local providers have never been able to ink a deal with Paul Allen's Comcast. So the web stream remains the best way to see them.

 

I do not believe there is justification for not web streaming games which are being carried on TV. It does not appear that web viewership really competes with television viewership significantly. Somewhere I remember that the TV viewership for NWSL games last year was in the neighborhood of 100,000 +/- per game. I did find that Equalizer reported 63,000 TV viewers for the Spirit-Reign game in mid-July 2013.

FWIW, the first seven YouTube games on the NWSL YouTube channel for 2014 I opened show "views" , which I rounded: 4000, 6000, 4000, 15000 (Breakers at Reign), 19000(Thorns at Dash season opener), 7000, 8000. Plus, the second Thorns-Dash game had 3000 views. Just for crude comparison of YouTube views vs. TV viewers, the average of the above YouTube views is 8000. That represents 13% of 63,000 TV viewers and 8% of 100,000 TV viewers. And that assumes that none of the web viewers will switch to TV viewing.

I can't believe that the value to sponsors or networks for NWSL TV games is any different if a game has 55,000 vs. 63,000 viewers or if it has 92,000 vs. 100,000 viewers. None of those numbers carry much weight.

For the NFL, web vs. TV matters. For NWSL it does not. STREAM THE TV GAMES!

 

If they are going to webcast games they need to be on the top streaming ESPN3. Taking the teams that have a local broadcaster and placing that Broadcast on ESPN3 is what ESPN3 does with many leagues.
The USSF and ESPN paertnership is already there if they want to give the NWSL itsw best exposure would be through ESPN3, ESPNW websight and ESPN can begin to place some matches on one of their Cable networks whether it be ESPN2 or even ESPNNews
FS2, FSGO, and Youtube do not compare to any of the ESPN outlets.

 

Wow! Three regular season games and the three playoff games will be aired on ESPN2. ESPN3.com will also livestream three additional games.

http://nwslsoccer.com/News/812790.html