Would a 16 teams Copa America get a lot of TV revenue in USA?

Euro TV rating is up 79%

The money these days for major tournaments is from TV.

What if CONCACAF and CONMEBOL combined for once every 4 years tournament? Copa America

CONCACAF: 8 countries
CONMEBOL: 8 countries

p.s. Anyone know how much ESPN is paying for Euro 2012 TV rights?

I think it would. These summer tournaments are GREAT for broadcasters b/c summer is usually a slow time for sports, particularly July. Put this combined COPA in July right after the MLB all star game and you have a great product to sell.

The only problem I could see would be that you'd be losing a lot of the American europosers and wouldn't be gaining much back from the English language viewer perspective. With the Euro you have English speaking fans that are big fans of Italy, Ireland, England, Netherlands, Germany, France, and Spain. In a tournament featuring North and South America the teams that would appeal the most to English Speakers are United States, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Canada. And I would imagine among English speakers only the United States and Brazil rival the following that the European teams get from English speaking fans in the US.

Part of the reason the Euro tournament is doing so well on English speaking TV is because it's full of teams that have legendary status with English speaking fans. I don't see the same being true with a Copa Panamerica kind of tournament.

It's a given that a) There would also be spanish language coverage whether there was a big network throwing real money at it to cover it properly in English or not, and b) That the spanish language ratings would be huge regardless of if there was good, quality english language coverage or not.

I just don't see it happening.

Traffic Sports USA, in conjunction with CONCACAF, is planning a Copa PanAmericana in the U.S. in 2016 after Traffic Sports lost the marketing rights to Copa America starting 2015 to Grupo Full Play (which has a very close business relationship with Qatar Media.)

No word yet on whether CONMEBOL will go for Traffic's Copa PanAmericana idea, especially since Traffic is suing CONMEBOL in the State of Florida. The lawsuit is strictly symbolic, as CONMEBOL is based in Paraguay and has no assets in the U.S. so Traffic will never collect one penny from CONMEBOL no matter how the lawsuit is decided.

If Copa PanAmericana 2016 were to come to fruition, expect the TV rights in the U.S. to go into the stratosphere. Univision Communications, Telemundo Media/NBC Sports Group, ESPN/ESPN Deportes, FOX Sports Media Group/FOX Soccer/FOX Deportes, and beIN Sport USA LLC will likely all bid.

The majority of Americans trace their ancestry back to Europe. German ancestry makes up the biggest ancestry group of the whole USA followed by Scots-Irish and Scottish. Weirdly enough hardly any Americans have any English ancestry what so ever.
Back to the point is that the Euro does well because the players in the Tournament can be related to with Americans because we share an ethnicity with them.

1. Such a tournament would almost have to be 10/6 rather than 8/8 to get CONMEBOL on board.
2. Everyone involved would see this as a first step toward unifying the confederations. Each nation's FA would act accordingly. The interests of Bolivia and Venezuala are very different from Argentina and Brazil. The interests of the US and Mexico are very different from the interests of the micronations that run CONCACAF.

FYI, this is completely untrue, as "English blood" is the largest contributor to white America. German blood is next.

A PanAmerican tournament will not be a good idea, there are only four top quality teams in the Americas, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and depending on the year, Chile or Paraguay, other than that, not much talent. And yes, American will not tune in. I do agree with the whole blood alignment to European ancestry theory.

25 million Americans have English blood. 50 million have German ancestry, 30-40 million have scots-irish ancestry or scottish ancestry. So no, English is not the most dominant ancestry. There are more hispanics in America than there are people with English Ancestry.

A combined Copa America(s) was rumored earlier this year. 2016 (an off year for Copa America) will mark a 100th anniversary for Copa America and there has been talk of doing something different and special that year.

There was talk about the US hosting in 2016. Setup would be ten teams from South America, 6 teams from Concacaf. 4 seeded teams would be US, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, creating a large amount of first round games that would draw tv viewers.

I think you guys are a bit off if you don't think the viewership would be just as good or better than the Euro's, especially if US hosted. The Mexico games alone on Univision would draw an enormous amount of eye balls and the English language posers would watch all the Brazil and Argie games and the US would draw well enough too.

But sadly this rumor never really seemed to have any legs.
http://www.mlssoccer.com/blog/smorgasborg/2012/01/27/no-world-cup-theres-always-copa-america
http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2012/1/28/2754607/united-states-mexico-host-2016-copa-america

wouldn't be surprised if US hosts the competition. Its the Copa AMERICA, not Sudamerica!!

This is the same Traffic that sold the US WC qualifying game to a pay per view outlet? If so, no thanks.

That's unbelievably not true. One of the most untrue statements ever written.

Well we call our country America, not North America, so why can't the call their tournament Copa America?

Is the same thing as calling people from the United States Americans.

I read somewhere that people from the United States were call Americans by Europeans so we became Americans, but the true is that by definition an American is someone born in the Americas which include both North, Central and South America.

But, then again, we call Football Soccer.

It would be huge if played with every teams' top choice rosters. If its played at a time where it impedes on qualifying, both North American and South American, top players won't show up and this goes from a huge deal to Gold Cup status.

As for the Europosers and soccer fans in the US who don't watch the US.. its sad that they matter but when talking business they do.. but they will tune in when the 2016 equivalents of Messi, Tevez, Neymar, Chicarito, Dempsey, Forlan, Suazo, etc. show up!

I really hope this happens. As much as I love every USA game, i understand how some important games vs. some central american teams don't get the nation's attention. This on the other hand would!

No more Gold Cup
No more "old" Copa America

Let's say the new "Copa America" will start the year after the World Cup.

2015
2019
2023 etc...

World Cup has 64 matches.
This 16 countries tournament will have 31 matches.

With the World Cup 2018 and 2022 sold for $1 billion in USA TV rights. The 2015 and 2019 tournament could do around $250 mil (1/4 of WC) in the USA.

Since it is held in the same time zone (more or less) compare to Russia and Qatar, that's a benefit to Copa America.

What if NBC Sports Network or ESPN or FOX send a memo to CONCACAF and CONMEBOL saying they would pay $250 mil for 2015 and 2019 "combined" Copa America? (get rid of Gold Cup) Would CONCACAF/CONMEBOL say yes?

That's $125 mil per tournament. Each federation get an equal split. So $62.5 mil to each.

TV rights is the future and it could make a lot more money for CONCACAF and CONMEBOL compare to each federation doing it separately.

Prove me wrong. I have facts saying that German ancestry is the largest ancestry background of Americans.

I do not know if you are right or not, but just posting something and saying it is fact is not believable, even if you are right.

Provide back up, link to some stats, census data etc.

Canada doesn't have to qualify for the 12 team Gold Cup, but if there was a tournament with only 6 or 8 CONCACAF teams I don't think it would be fair to the rest of CONCACAF to give Canada an automatic spot because they may or may not be in the Top 6 or 8 in CONCACAF. If the distribution was 6 CONCACAF and 10 CONMEBOL, I would recommend the six CONCACAF countries that reach the 2013 Hexagonal be invited so that separate qualification isn't needed. I think it would be a lot of games for UNCAF (Central American) and CFU (Caribbean) countries to play if they had qualifiers for Gold Cup 2015, CONCACAF/CONMEBOL tournament 2016, and World Cup 2018. If the distribution was 8 CONCACAF and 8 CONMEBOL, I would give the six CONCACAF countries that reach the 2013 Hexagonal spots and the six countries eliminated in the Semifinals could make two qualifying groups of three hosted by the two eliminated Semifinals with the most points in that round. One qualifying group would have two third place teams and one fourth place team with the other group having one third place team and two fourth place teams. Each team would only have to play two qualifiers. Both groups could have one team from each 2012 Semifinal group. As for 8 CONMEBOL spots, I would take the Top 7 in qualifying for World Cup 2014 and Brazil.

Nothing you are saying is even remotely true. You are looking at "data" based upon what people self-report in a census questionnaire in 2010. It is not even close to being a reflection of reality. In the 1st census in 1790, based on surname analysis, it is estimated that 60% of the white population in the United States at that time was of English descent. It would not be less today if someone were to genetically test a large sample of the white population.

The seven most common surnames in the United States are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller and Davis. Leaving aside that Williams, Jones and Davis are also extremely common surnames in Wales, those surnames are as English as Yorkshire pudding. However, unlike German surnames, like Kleinschmidt and Schwarzkopf, which loudly pronounce the fact that the person has German ancestry, no one ever asked "What kind of a name is Smith?" or "What part of England are your people from, Mr. Smith?". Despite the obvious English origin of their surnames, no one in America ever thinks of the Smiths and the Browns as being of English descent. In fact, most Smiths and Browns probably can't trace their ancestors back to England because it is too remote in time.

The fact is that most Americans with "English blood" as you call it don't self-identify as being "English-American" because to them, "English-American" is the same as "American". English-Americans don't regard themselves as being ethnic, they just regard themselves as Americans.

Your "facts" are what people self-reported to the Census Bureau in 2010. Those aren't facts, they're opinions.

Here is another "fact" for you, since you love Census data: In the 1980 United States Census, the largest reported ancestry was English, with over 49 million (49,598,035) Americans claiming English ancestry, or 26.34% of the total population and the largest ethnic group in the United States. This outnumbered those claiming German ancestry. So I ask you, has there been an epic wave of German immigration in the last 30 years?

This is from Wikipedia:
"According to American Community Survey in 2010 data, Americans reporting English ancestry made up an estimated 9.0% of the total U.S. population, and form the third largest European ancestry group after German Americans and Irish Americans. However, demographers regard this as an undercount, as the index of inconsistency is high, and many, if not most, people from English stock have a tendency to identify simply as Americans[7][8][9][10] or, if of mixed European ancestry, nominate a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.[11]"

Every US President but two, Martin Van Buren and John F. Kennedy, has had English ancestry.

Keep in mind that those rights were sold to PPV because no "regular channel" such as FOX Soccer, ESPN Networks (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes), NBC Sports Network, or Univision Networks were wiling to pay the hefty rights fee. I heard that the rights fees were somewhere in the "mid six digits". Throw in satellite transmission fees plus costs for announcers, and you could be looking close to $1M USD.

It's probably a safe bet that the usual outlets (listed above) were willing to hedge their bets and pay such hefty rights fees to "more important" games, such as one in Azteca.

The game wasn't that hard to find. Maybe I got lucky, but I had three bars to choose from. Only one was enforcing a $10 cover fee, but I heard that all who watched the game got a $10 gift card for that same place. A second place was advertising a $10 cover fee, as mandated by the provider, but they weren't enforcing it. The third place was advertising "no cover."

Braun, Schmidt/Schmitt and Müller are the most common German surnames and I wouldn`t be suprised if German immigrants changed those surnames to Brown, Smith and Miller once they emigrated to the US or during WWI/WWII. Hence, I don`t think you can say, that a person with an English-sounding surname must have roots in England. The surname might as well come from Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands,etc.