Don't know how this will affect The United. But according to awful announcing, American Sports Network is closing down at the end of the month. http://awfulannouncing.com/local-ne...ork-reportedly-cease-operation-end-month.html (Sorry if this has been mentioned already)
ASN (American Sports Network) is the company that produces D.C. United's soccer games. So if D.C. United doesn't pay for all aspects of the production costs. Games might not be on TV. Unless management goes and asks CSN for some kind of deal.
I doubt that happens. DC moved from CSN and there is no mention of United on that channel at all. All the other local teams (including college) have their logos pasted all over their website, but not United. Check out this link to CSN's More (Sports) > Soccer: http://www.csnmidatlantic.com/soccer
On the plus side without broadcasts of United playing Benny ball on the Agent Orange proving grounds at RFK, sans the horrid production and I assume painful announcing we can go back to more humane torture methods like waterboarding
My point is this is a Mickey Mouse league. A club losing it's TV outlet 1/3 of the way into the season is Mickey Mouse.
I understand where you are coming from. The optics don't look good from a league standpoint,, but I can't use this as an indictment of the league. The league has a deal with FOX, ESPN, Univision and now Facebook. It's up to the individual teams to take care of their local broadcast deals in every sport. A shitty Sinclair deal was the best United could come up with. This is a market where MSE teams fight over CSN stations and the Nats and Os have been in a dispute with MLB over MASN from the beginning.
This doesn't just affect MLS. My alma mater's conference had their basketball and football games on ASN.
I don't put this 100% on MLS. I simply call it a symptom of a bigger disease. Have you seen this USL2 side Minnesota United put out on the pitch. Good call on more expansion Don Garber.
On the other hand, the team that put up 6 on them is an expansion team with no history or existing soccer structure.
Wait, ASN is the organization responsible for the train wreck coverage we've been experiencing? Thank God. Based on the broadcasts, I thought they were incompetent narcoleptic chimpanzees. Insolvency is a math based explanation I can understand. I realize there's a chicken and egg problem here, but I'm going to ignore that, now that my faith in humanity and capitalism has been restored. Has someone forwarded this link to the FO?
Yes it is All Sinclair. Sinclair overpaid for all these contracts for conferences and teams they are broadcasting. That and very bad productions is part of the reason ASN is going under. Also the things they broadcast just doesn't draw viewers interest. I don't see Sinclair continuing the pump money into broadcasts that don't make them money. I see games only continuing to be on Sinclair if D.C. united fronts all production costs.
I never understood why CSN refused to cover DCU adequately. DCU were the black sheep on that Network. As soon as Salazar left DCU coverage was done.
If you ran a network, would you take on a product that doesn't make money? It all goes to why ASN is shutting down, you can broadcast as much sporting events as you want. But if they are lower grade events, they just dont draw ratings. No ratings brings low advertising dollars. And now that you have a team that cant even score a goal this season, I dont see fans flocking to their tvs to see what a great product DC United has.
For what it's worth, at the end of the Crew match, they did advertise the next match on April 1st, with the times for the pre-show. ASN is supposedly going under on March 31.
DCU would be better off cutting a deal with Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube to broadcast games. Allegedly MLS demographics are off the charts. Those entities can offer a finer grain of targeted advertising to their constituents and are still learning the game. Additionally, they're pretty cash rich and might go on a breakeven basis with DCU just for the learning opportunity.