MLS TV Contract Yes or No?

[Bora Fan]

Garber and gang have been claiming a first time rights fee deal will be completed soon.

So far nothing concrete has been announced.

Did I miss something - and the basic terms of the deal are out there or does it look like the deal has been held up for some reason?

I seem to remember last year the rights fee message was promoted by Garber and the expectation I had was the terms of the deal would be out by the end of hte year.

Now we are close to the WC and nothing.

What gives?

What sort of figures are people expecting out of the deal?

[pupusa3000]

We'll probably find out before the start of the 07 season. Though I hope it is announced sooner, like after the WC.
And though we have no idea what the figures might be (not a whole lot I imagine) , it will be double because ABC/ESPN and Univision while pay for MLS TV rights.

[monster]

From today's Steve Goff chat:

Owings Mills: Any news on the possibility of a rights fee for MLS broadcasts in 2007?

Steven Goff: Yes, it appears it will be announced soon.

I have had a hunch for a while that the deal is done, but they are waiting for the right time to announce it - like before one of the WC "sendoff" friendlies, but that's nothing but a guess.

[Bora Fan]

I suppose the best time to announce it would be around the the time that the greatest number of eyeballs are on the sport. . . i.e. during the leadup to the World Cup.

That way every MLS mention is either preceeded by "recently signing a rights fee TV deal with ESPN" or "responsible for developing the majority of the players in the WC squad."

That's all fine by me - just want to make sure that the deal is still on and that MLS didn't count it's chickens before they hatched.

I'm also really curious to see how the Univision deal works out given the problems with the games last time. This time do you think they will get most of the Chivas games - or more balanced spread of teams - and who will announce - and what time will the games be on? Sunday?

[joebloe888]

I suppose the best time to announce it would be around the the time that the greatest number of eyeballs are on the sport. . . i.e. during the leadup to the World Cup.

That way every MLS mention is either preceeded by "recently signing a rights fee TV deal with ESPN" or "responsible for developing the majority of the players in the WC squad."

That's all fine by me - just want to make sure that the deal is still on and that MLS didn't count it's chickens before they hatched.

I'm also really curious to see how the Univision deal works out given the problems with the games last time. This time do you think they will get most of the Chivas games - or more balanced spread of teams - and who will announce - and what time will the games be on? Sunday?

Univision's struggling 2nd broadcast network TeleFutura, which airs mostly dubbed movies with some Mexican League games sprinkled in (junk games get 300000 households, while Chivas Guadalajara can draw over 500000 households), has a TON of time to fill so MLS should have no trouble getting a deal done with Univison Sports.

I would look for MLS to be on TeleFutura on one of the weekend nights starting 2007 unless Univision were to sell the TeleFutura network to the likes of Tribune Broadcasting, which gave up its stake in the WB Network in exchange for an affiliation agreement with the new CW Network.

Tribune Broadcasting reportedly was interested in taking over the TeleFutura stations and possibly converting them into something else.

The MLS deal with Disney/ESPN is considerably more complicated and will take more time to get done.

[geordienation]

Univision's struggling 2nd broadcast network TeleFutura, which airs mostly dubbed movies with some Mexican League games sprinkled in (junk games get 300000 households, while Chivas Guadalajara can draw over 500000 households), has a TON of time to fill so MLS should have no trouble getting a deal done with Univison Sports.

I would look for MLS to be on TeleFutura on one of the weekend nights starting 2007 unless Univision were to sell the TeleFutura network to the likes of Tribune Broadcasting, which gave up its stake in the WB Network in exchange for an affiliation agreement with the new CW Network.

Tribune Broadcasting reportedly was interested in taking over the TeleFutura stations and possibly converting them into something else.

The MLS deal with Disney/ESPN is considerably more complicated and will take more time to get done.

Tribune isn't buying Telefutura.

They just got out of the network business. They could have had a piece of the CW but didn't want it.

They're carrying too much short term debt (to pay off the tax bill from the Times-Mirror acquisition case that they lost) to be serious about buying anything.

If anything, they'll buy the 1/3 of Careerbuilder.com that KR owned.

[DAGSports]

Tribune isn't buying Telefutura.

They just got out of the network business. They could have had a piece of the CW but didn't want it.

They're carrying too much short term debt (to pay off the tax bill from the Times-Mirror acquisition case that they lost) to be serious about buying anything.

If anything, they'll buy the 1/3 of Careerbuilder.com that KR owned.
Yeah, but that's basically semantics. Tribune is probably still very much part of the relationship between CBS and TW because they own the stations the CW most needs (WPIX, WGN, KTLA). The CW will probably do anything Tribune asks of it, within reason.

[Bora Fan]

How much money do you folks expect MLS to squeeze out of ESPN/Univision for the 2007-2014 rights?

Are we talking about $1,000,000 a year?

What will become of SUM - as they sell advertising for MLS and other entities they represent right?

Also if it's for 7 years - do these types of contracts tie to any type of incentives - say if ESPN starts seeing better ratings more interest in the games - does it mean they make more money and keep it all for themselves - or do they share revenue?

I guess this is why it takes so long to wrap up deals like this.

Thoughts?

[kebzach]

What will become of SUM - as they sell advertising for MLS and other entities they represent right?


SUM is the body that buys and sells the TV rights themselves, as opposed to MLS. They are a subsidiary company of MLS, although I'm not sure that's exactly how they have it set up. Either way, I'm sure that there will still be work for SUM to do.