MLS 2016 TV Thread (Ratings, Historical Data, Contracts etc)

college sports

 

Just putting this MLS Live tidbit in here for those who might not know that it's still around this year.

http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2015/12/17/mls-live-2016

MLS LIVE will return for the 2016 season. You can now start or manually renew* your subscription for a special, limited-time preseason price of just $64.99. (Offer ends Feb. 22, 2016 - regular price will be $79.99) Your subscription will begin immediately and lasts until December 31, 2016.

To be honest, I grew a little bored with MLS at the end of last season and was thinking I might not renew this year, whether or not the ESPN streaming thingy went through. Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder and I'm back in for another round!

 

That seems really unlikely. MLS wants teams to start getting money from local broadcasters. Big money, not just a share of an internet service. They are not going to hamstring that effort by allowing in-market fans to go around them. I don't think any U.S. pro league allows that. Local TV money is just too big a part of a team's revenue.

The Dynamo originally had a deal to get $1 million a year from the local regional sports network. Let's say instead the Dynamo had gotten $100 from each MLS Live subscriber. It would have taken ten of thousands of local subscribers to make up for the loss of that local TV deal. Which doesn't even count the production costs. That regional sports network collapsed and the new deal doesn't pay the Dynamo anywhere close to that but they certainly have hopes of getting back there. Selling access separately wouldn't help.

And that doesn't even get to the reduction that the league would face from ESPN and FOX if the national games were available as part of MLS Live. Those networks want cord-cutters to still pay them to get access to their product.

 

This will happen eventually but not in the short term. There are still roughly 100 million residential cable/satellite subscriptions in the US. There's still more money there than anything MLS could get online. Catering to cord cutters can jeopardize the TV business/contracts. That pendulum will swing definitively in the coming years, but I wouldn't expect it right away.

Besides I think the cable market will morph as cord cutting becomes more prevalent so it's unclear what the landscape will be in 10 years. Right now the TV set top boxes are becoming more and more integrated with the internet. The direction the market is heading in, it's unclear whether there will be that much separation between broadband and TV in the packages companies offer. Channel packages will just get rolled into the basic product that you're paying for which includes the broadband which you need anyways if you're streaming. In a way the modern cable set top box will compete more with a PS4 or Xbox1. If you're not a gamer, the cable set top box may be a better video entertainment platform in a typical household ... especially as it integrates all the TVs in your house into one streamlined network. You will be able to watch ESPN and switch to Netflix and switch to Youtube all on one integrated platform. There's also some interesting developments with satellite companies investing heavily in acquiring wireless spectrums which can open new possibilities of integrating traditional TV with mobile networks ... Not sure where that technology is heading, but in the future satellite companies may be able to deliver content wirelessly which would be a game changer.

 

Not to mention, the current deals with FOX and ESPN give those companies digital rights to their games through the end of the 2022 season. I suppose it's theoretically possible a side deal could be worked out to buy those rights from ESPN and FOX but as previous posters have said that isn't at all realistic.

 

Do you happen to know if MLS Live has full matches from previous seasons? And more obscurely, if those vids can be downloaded and converted?

 

They've always had the prior seasons before. No idea about the downloads.

 

Well, I've captured video and audio from youtube, which is streaming media so I'm assuming you could do the same with the MLS Live Streams. Something like VLC might work, but to be honest I've never trying capturing anything longer than a few minutes.

 

I've used Mozilla's downloadhelper to capture YouTube and other types of streaming vids, but some sites do block it. There are a few highlight vids I'd like to make, but the one Galaxy/MLS offers via YouTube these days are a lot shorter.

 

So what exactly happened to the plan for everything to go through ESPN3
(or whatever it's called now)?

 

math and pie chart fail,,

25% + 25.3% + 29.7% =

 

They weren't sure how to categorize Ray Hudson.

 

Chris Schlosser claimed this on Reddit recently:

To be clear, you are not misremembering the plan for everything to go through ESPN3. They're just now erroneously claiming that they never said that that would be the case (see quoted response in that link).

I'm a fan of MLS Live so I don't mind maintaining the status quo, but it seems clear that they've completely backtracked on transitioning everything to ESPN3.

 

I remember the 1970s when we were lucky to get a handful of games (or so my memory from childhood suggests). Back then we had to walk to school uphill both ways in blizzards with sandwich bags for shoes.

There are games broadcast in other languages, such as French, on specialty cable channels. Granted, I'd be surprised if that equaled 20% and, as you note, the pie chart doesn't account for it.

 

I was thinking about "other" as well, but I can't imagine it would be that large and if anything Spanish may be underrepresented.

 

Weird. I'm actually happy with MLS Live, so i'm happy it's staying the same. It just seems noteworthy that it never materialized.

 

I don't know, there are a shit ton of specialty language channels around the cable dial, offering a lot of languages, and probably many of them show some soccer games.

 

Those channels are what I was thinking of.

 

I signed up for MLS Live for the first time this year, so we will see how much I like it.

 

You won't like it ... you'll love it. You'll also kick yourself for not having subscribed years ago.

 

My only question is whether or not it works through the Xbox One or not