They were given the opportunity to pay for the rights, but the owners, Traffic Sports I believe , overvalued them
In most countries, BeIn did an excellent decision to get established: get European soccer rights. But in the United States, BeIn did a bad decision to get established: get European soccer rights.
To each their own. I am not a big critic on the quality of coverage in this case of networks winning rights. To me having an additional player bidding for content increases the chance our domestic networks wont win the rights which is a bad thing for the reasons I mentioned earlier. It also reduces viewership for casual fans, and potential fans due to availability which is a bigger issue (to me) than quality of coverage.
Casual fans usually avoided the USA-Trinidad & Tobago or St. Vincent type of road games on ESPN2. I don't buy the premise that moving to beIN stunts the growth of the fans. In fact since the coverage was better with longer pre-game shows hyping up the match a fan could see it was a big deal on beIN as compared to going from world strongest man competitions into 2 minute pre-game coverage.
In other words, they should have saved their money on some of these fringe competitions here in the U.S. and offered double or triple what Fox offered for Thursday night NFL and solved their carriage issues.
Some how I don't think the NFL would have wanted to deal with the same company as ALJazeera. Would have been weird and bad publicity for the most part. Especially after the News failures and olbermann connection.
Beyond the ownership of beIN, I don't think the NFL would want to be on a channel that existed for under 10 years.
If BeIN paid double or triple what they are getting now, the NFL would have created a package for them. The NFL is the highest rated broadcast on at least 4 networks. C.R.E.A.M, money talks.
Did they? I remember more of them being on regular TV channels, or was that just the game in Azteca? Was it the 2009 game on Telemundo and English on mun2? I remember the PPV/closed circuit being several cycles ago.
Yeah. They already have a partnership with BeIN outside of North America. But those channels have been around for awhile
Mexico had it's own package so it was not included in the Traffic Sports package. Guatemala v. USMNT was the last PPV game. Prior to that one being in traditional PPV, closed circuit was a common outlet for the non Mexico away qualifiers
How in the world does airing the away games on a platform with less than 20 million potential viewers NOT stunt growth? ESPN 2 is in approx. 90 million homes. Way more chance of a casual stumbling upon a game on ESPN 2 than Bein.
Because they only care about $. Whoever pays more gets the rights. I doubt that the people in charge (who are oft corrupt anyway) care about growing their qualifiers more than “which network will pay us the most money over x number of years
When Concacaf Team X hosts the USA, they want money from TV, but why should they care if the popularity of soccer grows in the USA in general? Team X might feel like they have an easier time qualifying if the popularity of soccer in the USA doesn't grow.
Because it's still the largest market in the Western Hemisphere. If people in the US don't care about soccer, they won't watch, and if they won't watch, the value of those qualifiers sinks, which costs those individual federations money. If all 300 million Americans were suddenly soccer fans, those individual nations could charge an obscene amount of money because demand for it would be significantly higher, thus allowing them to make more money.
Stunting the growth of soccer is underrated in any case. If soccer was super popular in the U.S., every soccer match (in English) would be covered like the last WC, complete with clownish pre- and post-match shows. No thank you! The quantity of televised games readily available to us wouldn’t necessarily increase either. And certainly, the ticket price of live matches wouldn’t decrease. I see little/no benefit of the game growing in the U.S.
I don't see the game growing on ESPN2 after some obscure tv show nobody watches and playing a crappy Caribbean team on a crappy field in front of an empty stadium. Most casual fans would tune out. Heck most of us passionate fans around here would tune out.
Some of those central american teams don't have enough money to charter a plane (i. e. Honduras when playing Australia in the WC qualifiers). Plus, half the money ends up in the pockets of the individuals who may not be around in four years when the new deal is signed. Add these two together and it's clear why the money goes to the highest bidder. Now, if Concacaf would do something and pool the rights like UEFA, maybe it would be better.
I agree somewhat, and I don't like clownish people like Fiore, but growing the the game can help in ways other than game availability and ticket prices. If growing the game would make the quality of American players better, that would be good. It would be good if a greater percentage of fans at home game rooted for the USMNT. I'd like if soccer got popular enough that WFAN (being the most popular Sports station in the biggest market it's probably the most listened to Sports station in the country) would tell you if the USMNT had a WCQ that day. If the Red Bulls play NYCFC in the playoffs, how much the local media cares will show how far MLS has to go. Two New York City areas teams haven't met in the playoffs since the Devils beat the Rangers in May 2012, and it hasn't happened in one of the three most popular leagues since the Nets swept the Knicks in April 2004.
Anyone here watch Bein on Roku? beinn connect app is not working for me for a week! I get this message :"No media Found" on all channels .. I emailed support but they are not helping
Yeah ran into the same thing on both of my Rokus last weekend. Connect (unless you're accessing it through Fubo) is a shitshow.
beIN was scheduled to show a half-dozen Copa Del Rey matches next Tuesday through Thursday, but now they have been removed from their listings guide. Have they lost the rights, or at the very least, have to negotiate a new deal to show this years matches? Perhaps socceraction can clarify the situation....
Or ESPN and Fox undervalues them. My understanding is that ESPN/Fox get the home qualifiers for almost nothing. That is on US Soccer.
Looks like they finally fixed Connect on Roku - I'm watching Ligue 1 this afternoon on it for the first time in weeks.