So, some mouth breathers and frat boys were mad b\c they had to press the "up" button on their remotes in order to watch people talk about RG3 and Derrick Rose, big whoop.
i find it interesting that soccer is the only sport that gets people so worked up. Just go type in sportscenter soccer on twitter and you get a gold mine of complaints about soccer on ESPN. This doesn't happen with any other sport. ESPN could air snail racing and there would be less complaints.
I don't know, I always get pissed when the show Little League Baseball - and now Twitter affords me the venue to express my displeasure.
It's the latest fad in America. Everything thinks there is a huge conspiracy against them. Chalk it down to conservative persecution complex, that everyone is out to get them.
All those blathering idiots on twitter are just upset they will not get to see Mel Kiper's hair for another year.
From @TVSportsRatings via Twitter: Man City - Man Utd got 1 million viewers (ages 2+) on ESPN U.S. 88% male. Median age 28. Translation: Big EPL matches now provide legitimate advertising opportunities for beer, mobile devices, video games, sports drinks, energy drinks, motor vehicles, insurance services, etc. to target young males in the 18-34 demographic, multi-lingual (i.e. Spanish and English), high-income (higher than median income of CNBC viewers.) == FOX Sports and ESPN, Inc. combined paid around $60 million for U.S. media rights to EPL for 2010-2013. I now expect the EPL to demand at least $180 million for the same U.S. media rights in 2013-2016 (up from the $150 million I was expecting as the absolute minimum.) If Qatar Media were to bid for the U.S. media rights to EPL (with or without a partner such as Comcast,) then I would expect the winning bid to be in the range of $300-360 million, not $240-300 million. Anyone who does NOT believe that Univision would also be a serious bidder is not doing his/her homework. Until I am told otherwise by sources, I would continue to assume that FOX and ESPN will attempt to bring Univision in as the 3rd partner for the purpose of fending off Qatar Media.
From 60 to 180 and you expect the final bid to be around $360M. That's a lot of money for an event that only gets 600K TO 800K audience. Are you sure about these figures?
Press release from ESPN, Inc. regarding the Man City-Man Utd match: http://es.pn/IQwbHg == ESPN U.S.: Average of 1.033 million viewers (ages 2+) 832,000 households 0.8% household rating -- ESPN Deportes U.S. (data from NTI-Hispanic subset) 273,000 viewers ages 2+ 205,000 households == ESPN3.com, Watch ESPN, XBox, etc: Time average of 87,200 streams
0.6 Rating for the whole match for the Key Demo...(1.033 million viewers) 0.8 Rating for the whole-match (2:30-5:00 PM/Match-window much higher) The match-window is always a little higher...I assume we probably had about 1.2 million or so for the match-window (and close to a 0.7 rating-0.8 rating)...The game probably peaked during the last 30 minutes or 15 minutes (we might have peaked to about 1.4 million viewers)... This opens the door for some more games to be shifted to ESPN from ESPN2 (as long as ESPN retains the rights via being the primary or secondary outlet)... The game pretty much fell within my expectations. I mentioned that the 0.6 rating was in-play...(but the match window could have averaged around 0.7 rating, and few more viewers)..The 1 million mark was above my expectation...I taught the Max we will see is around 800K-900K...A weekend showdown would have taken us to 1.5+ million viewers on ESPN... The DEMO was great...The game attracted 88% male with a median average of 28...According to TVSportsratings...
Telemundo is paying $50 million/year for U.S. rights 17 Chivas Guadalajara regular season home games plus up to 6 playoff games. One would expect Jorge Vergara to accept no less than $100 million/year for the same U.S. rights to Chivas home games for the 2013-2018 contract cycle. == If you were a media executive, would you rather pay: $100 million/year for 17-23 Chivas Guadalajara home matches each season (but only 1 of which can be marketed as a "big match" with 100% certainty), a product which has lost about half of its U.S. TV audience since 2007 and has not found bottom yet? or $100-120 million/year for 380 EPL matches, about 8-12 of which can be marketed as "big matches" and can draw 800,000 to 1 million MEN with a median age under 30 and higher median income compared to CNBC? -- FOX spent the last 14 years trying to prove that EPL can be used in the U.S. to build a new business. Any wonder why Comcast is now lurking in the shadows, playing "GodFather" with the Emir of Qatar?
The Problem is that Mexicans made about 70% of the entire spanish speaking population in the United States, and they would rather watch Mexican football. The EPL is a great product, but there are not that many Mexicans playing in the EPL. I can be wrong, but must spanish speaking audience would rather watch La Liga than the EPL. Must Immigrants from the Americas have more history with La Liga. Nonetheless, I can not argue that the EPL is a better product than the Mexican league, but try to sell that to the 70% of spanish specking audience in the United States. Should Telemundo launch another HD channel?
I do agree that those numbers represent one hell of an impressive jump. However... the leagues/networks can "demand" whatever the hell they'd like. The key is whether or not ESPN/FOX will cave in to those "demands" or not. Obviously, for ever impressive top-tier matchup, there's several that aren't as impressive. The key is whether or not the channels will pay the ransom for the upper-tier games, knowing that those will be few and far between. (I say "few and far between" because there's only so many to go around, and there's multiple channels that'll end up with the games.)
Remember when ESPN had the UEFA CL rights in the US and they'd usually pick a matchup involving one or two La Liga and/or Serie A teams? The "coming up next, for our international audience" was always a matchup featuring teams from the other countries. The reason being that the Latino-based US audience would rather watch those games instead of the EPL, Bundesliga, Russian, or whatever other leagues were involved. Obviously, the "rules" changed when ESPN Deportes launched. They got the La Liga/Serie A matchup, and ESPN2 primarily got teams from England and Germany.
Because ESPN advertising sales took the easiest way out to make as much money as possible on short notice. Instead of having to convince skeptical English-language advertisers to try EPL, ESPN's sales people went to the Spanish-language advertisers to offer additional exposure on ESPN U.S. (and ESPN2 U.S. in the case of La Liga) for twice (if not 3 times) the usual ad rate. Selling spot ads for soccer on less than 1-week notice is not an easy task.
Because State Farm wanted to put it there, and made the price right. This is America, we speak currency here.
Remember, this was for the whole match...The match-window was probably about 200K higher...meaning we had roughly about 1.6 million viewers on TV (ESPN+ESPNDeportes+ESPN3)... This is just a snapshot...No numbers from Pubs, sports bars, restaurants, airports, and etc. But, if you are getting this type of a number during weekday, then the out-of-the house viewing numbers could add another 20%-30% to the bottom line (using World Cup 2010 analysis for Out-of-the-home viewing)...A very conservative take for the out-of-the-home experience...
As a football fan I am in heaven right now, but the more this game becomes popular in this country, the more expensive is going to be. I could have stated home yesterday to see the game, but opted to go to a near bar, total cost $31 with tip included.
If I'm Fox and I'd bring on Univision in a heartbeat and give them the 1st choice game every week if it means I keep the rights for 9 English Language games and 8 Spanish Language games every week. The Premier League is way too valuable TV product for Fox to give up w/o a fight since it eats up so many hours of programming on FSC, FS+, FS Deportes, and FSN. Fox should fall on the sword and lose the best Spanish language game of the week for the exposure on a platform as massive as Univision and the hope to the attract more fans to Fox Deportes from the exposure to Spanish speaking soccer fans of the league who watch a game on Univision. Losing 1 game to Univision to me is worth keeping 17 games a week for Fox when you take into account the English and Spanish language games.
Quick comparison of U.S. rights fees for various European domestic leagues: EPL - about $20 million/season (2010-2013), expected to rise to at least $60 million/season in next cycle (and possibly $100-120 million/season if Qatar Media were involved in the bidding) La Liga - $8 million/season (2009-2012), around $40-45 million/season (2012-2015) Serie A - Don't know for certain (but should be less than $4 million/season in 2009-2012) Bundesliga - $1 million/season (2009-2012), less than $2 million/season (2012-2015) The rest are worth less than $1 million/season. Probably no more than $250,000/season for a product such as the Eredivisie. EPL and La Liga have enough viewers in the U.S. for a company to build new businesses around them. In the case of La Liga, it has enough Spanish-speaking viewers in the U.S., but not enough English-speaking viewers with the exception of the two Barcelona-Real Madrid clasicos. Serie A does NOT. Bundesliga does NOT. == The "blueprint" for presenting EPL and La Liga in the U.S. is being written this season: EPL - "Big" matches on networks with "full distribution", the rest on specialty networks. At least 8 matches are "big" enough (home and away): Manchester United vs Chelsea, Manchester United vs Liverpool, Manchester United vs Arsenal, Manchester United vs Manchester City La Liga - the two Barcelona-Real Madrid "clasicos" on networks with "full distribution", presented 100% in Spanish (regardless of whether the network normally broadcasts in English or Spanish), the rest on specialty networks == If Comcast were able to convince Qatar Media to partner, then it makes sense to run at least one of the two Barcelona-Real Madrid clasicos as a "stunt" programming event on NBC Sports Network 100% in Spanish (announcers, graphics, advertising), i.e. "Telemundo on NBC Sports Network", and charge double the ad rate compared to what Telemundo Sports would normally charge if the match were to air only on Telemundo instead of both Telemundo and NBC Sports Network. (NBC Sports Network is not set up for SAP. The match with English-language audio would have to be streamed i.e at NBCsports.com or beinsports.tv)
Nielsen (NTI) data from @TVSportsRatings via Twitter: Man City vs Man United on ESPN on Monday April 30: Males 18-49: 1.21% Male college students (18-21) not living at home: 10.15% Male college students (18-21) living at home with at least one parent: 1.61% Median age of viewers: 28 MLS New York vs New England on NBC Sports Network last Saturday (April 28): Males 18-49: 0.04% Male college students (18-21) not living at home: 0.28% Male college students (18-21) living at home with at least one parent: 0.06% Median age of viewers: 46 Not every soccer match is created equal. Young males attending college (university) in the U.S. want to consume the big global brands (i.e. Manchester United.)
I did just now and was surprised to find a good number of pro-soccer comments - I'm guessing from context that Papiss Cisse's goal beat out a no hitter for best play of the day? If so - kudos.