Yep. Though not a lot of Saturday evening matches are 'marquee' top 6 games that a major network would like to feature. But if there's a match with one giant club like Man U-Villa or West Ham-City, they might give that a shot at 12:30 ET before ND football.
I was on the fence on this aquisition, but the over the air channel games is going to make the EPL more popular. However, Chicharito needs to stay in MU uniform. In addition, if MU gets a kid name James Rodriguez from Porto, that will also make the game popular with the Colombian Community. In addition, Telemundo is guarantee to show plenty of EPL next season. So even if you don't get games on NBC OTA, you can tune in to Telemundo for the spanish broadcast. If NBCUniversal play they cards right, the ratings will increase, but only if they make people addicted to the league. And Mun2 needs to be rebranded to something else, if you want people to associate the channel with football. As of right now, Mun2 is the spanish version of MTV. So congratulations to the EPL and NBCUniversal for getting Formula 1, and the EPL
Glad someone brought up the Telemundo aspect of this deal Jhernandez. IT is Free over- the- air in most major Markets and in HD. Most match days will not conflict with Leon or Chivas matches. As I said in another thread it may be smart for Telemundo to provide both a Spanish feed and a SAP alternative English feed for everyone to be happy. There is precedent for this when Telemundo had exclusive rights to the Mexico-USA match in the Azteca.
The key here is to get the Spanish speaking audience hock on the EPL, which can happen. The EPL is an attractive league. So, as long as the masses have access to the product, the ratings will eventually start showing it. This is a case of build it and they will come. The big winner here is Telemundo, but only if they play right.
I would also like to see Telemundo hire someone who has some knowledge of the EPL. After some quick brainstorming the perfect person to sign would be Juan Pablo Angel (assuming he retires soon.) He has played in the EPL, is Latino, obiously speaks Spanish, and has some broadcast experience with ESPN during the MLS Playoffs.
Would 100% wrong shock you? Remember, he had Be-IN either winning the rights outright or working some farcical programming trades with ESPN (Big East Football for the win) in an effort to shut out Fox. He also had BE-In bidding upwards of $500 million for the contract rights. NBC, when mentioned, was an afterthought, but even then BeIN was funding their bid. I believe NBC was referred to as a whore, greedily sucking on Be-IN's bank account. And that's just the highlights of all the crap he threw against the wall in his manic posting sprees. It's a pity Ollie got himself banned here, or we'd all be "enjoying" his constant posts of Candy Reid's man face as he plays pretend agent and pimps her out as the host of the NBC wrap around coverage. Or his constant posting of youtube rips of the local traffic girl in Bogota who wears camel toe revealing pants and is obviously US network caliber talent, despite her inability to speak English. Fap, Ollie, fap!
I vaguely recall something about leggy chicas on plexiglass desks and tight a--ed Brits........................or was that the movie I watched on Cinemax last night
So, not being versed in this arena whatsoever -- what does this do to Fox Soccer Channel? I mean, isn't the EPL sort of it's main reason for existing at this point? Just curious.
Great news. FSC still has not upgraded to HD and has issues reformatting the screen size properly to HDTV's. It drives me nuts. Somebody needs to wrestle the Champions League from FSC as well so I can watch the match with the audio properly synced.
They will focus on Champions League, Scottish League, Dutch League, Russian League, etc. Also, starting after the 2014 World Cup they get to focus on all FIFA associated properties: World Cup 2018, Confederations Cup 2017, Womens' World Cup 2015 in Canada, all the Youth World Cups,indoor Futsal, Beach soccer, etc.
If this is true, FSC becomes my new favorite channel. I like to watch football from all different leagues. I watch a ton of epl but i struggle to catch the spl, eredivisie, liga sagres, and russian prem matches. A little variety on the tv sounds great. Hope you're right!
He had everyone from TNT to Animal Planet on his radar. If he hadn't gone totally off the deep end and avoided being banned the last few days would have featured 10,000 word posts explaining how the "oily" BEIN sports guys were doing private banking with CSPAN which would result in CSPAN dropping Book Talk for 24/7 EPL. Dude had no more insight than my cat when it came to this, or any, deal.
I am always uncomfortable when non-soccer channels get too involved with soccer because they will do things like push stuff to PPV, push stuff to mobile viewing, and generally screw up the coverage. Look how long it took ESPN to get WC coverage right: 2010. 1994 could be forgiven, 1998 not so hot, 2002 the same, 2006 total disaster. But we'll see. FSC is in trouble. I hope DirecTV reclaims the FS+ HD slots and throws them at BeIñ.
It seems NBC will take it very seriously, no way they commit this kind of cash and not make the most of it. I'm very confident with this, I always felt FSC provided such a poor broadcast quality that NBC will fix.
Why would they want to restrict access? They'd charge higher prices (say, sports pack) for NBC channels on satellite providers? Wouldn't Comcast want NBC channels on as many TVs as possible? I thought such a thing was "illegal" under the terms of the purchase of NBC by Comcast?
That must be your provider or something on your end. FOX Soccer has been HD (at least on DirecTV, Time Warner, and U-Verse) for quite some time. Either that, or you're being sarcastic.
Arn't there certain Comcast or NBC channels not on DirecTV or Dish. I'd expect to see big games on those particular channels. Comcast is all about increasing market share. Maybe your right and it is not allowed under the terms of the NBCUniversal purchase. At work we couldn't believe the FCC or whoever makes those decisions allowed the purchase to go ahead in the first place.
I sure the fcc has not input on the deal. But, I do believe that the EPL wanted a larger coverage and NBCUniversal has the largest of them all. Comcast is the largest cable operator in the US. Plus they have two national over the air channels. The spanish rights will probably go to Telemundo and some to Mun2 which I have to say needs to be rebranded. So my guess is that about 20% to 30% of the EPL will be broadcast on over the air channels. I am also expecting MU to be shown about 50% of the 20% on Telemundo. At the end, this is a win win situation to all EPL Fans. Fox now really needs to rebrand their channels since two of their biggest brands are now gone, EPL and Formula 1. So fox soccer 1 and fox soccer 2 can now become Fox Sports 1 and Speed can be rebranded to Fox Sports 2. Fox Deportes still have La livertadores, but they should start thinking more about letting some of those games go in to Mundo Fox. R.I.P Goltv, your days are numbered. Either they will go down by themselves, and they will be acquire by someone in the likes of Fox, ESPN or beIN.
Agree the NBC deal is good for EPL's exposure, but I still think there should be a Soccer-specific network out there - if golf,tennis and even fishing can have their own channels soccer definitely should. Would love to see GOL and/or FSC survive. There's plenty of soccer inventory out there outside the big Euro leagues, but unfortunately not much of it is profitable
One thing's for sure, FS+ is done. As is FoxSoccer2Go - at least as a $20 per month subscription service. Since NBC has already stated they'll use digital broadcasting/pay platforms to deliver some Prem matches, they'll probably make it a lot like FS2GO.