The Football League Championship was on BeIN

4 Championship matches and 3 League Cup matches are on the espn3 schedule

 

Worldsoccertalk is reporting that Bein has renewed its contract

http://worldsoccertalk.com/2017/07/...ll-remain-bein-sports-tv-us-contract-renewed/

 

So why is ESPN3 showing the same 4 games that BeIN Connect is showing? lol

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017–18_EFL_Cup says:

"The 2017–18 EFL Cup will be the 58th season of the EFL Cup, formally known as the Football League Cup. The competition is open to all English and Welsh clubs participating in the Premier League and the English Football League. It will be known as the Carabao Cup due to the start of a sponsorship deal with Carabao Energy Drinks after the tournament was unsponsored the previous year."

Wikipedia cites a name change announcement from the BBC from November 4.

 

This would be great as the matches would be on demand on espn3, two words not in BeIN's vocabulary.

 

Sub license or maybe the league cup was sold off separately this time.

 

I was excited to see those Carabao Cup matches listed on WatchESPN last night.....but they appear to have been removed when I looked this morning.

 

All EFL Championship matches (the two JIP matches plus the delayed match) have been removed from the beIN TV schedule and replaced with other programming. In addition, the EFL highlight shows on Mondays have been removed as well.

Apparently, the renewal of the EFL has hit a snag.

(Most of the replacement programming is standard stuff, like Ligue 1 matches or in shortened form such as 90 in 30, but Aug 14 highlight show has been replaced by Turkish League highlights)

 

Updated CONNECT schedule cancelled all EFL matches scheduled this weekend.

 

Article coming to WorldSoccerTalk with some details...stay tuned....

SA
www.soccertvblog.com

 

beIN lost the Championship/League Cup rights to ESPN, but unclear still how ESPN is going to provide the games.

 

I'm all for this if it means matches on espn3. I guess we'll find out more tomorrow since the season starts Friday.

 

This weekend's Championship games and the Carabao Cup games next midweek have been all listed on ESPN3 on the WatchESPN.app.

 

As with anything, there are positives and negatives. On the positive side, espn3 is certainly more accessible than beINSport CONNECT. Also a big positive is espn3's On-Demand feature that gives flexibility for viewers to watch the matches at their convenience.

On the negative side, at least 1 match per matchday made it to the big screen at beINSport and a majority of matches were shown on TV when you include delayed broadcasts. Unless ESPN starts showing the matches on one of their networks, this is a big "minus" on the strictly TV side of things. Another negative is for some cord-cutters - specifically FuboTV users who do not have access to ESPN but had beINSports (including CONNECT).

One thing that worries me about this deal is that its NOT ESPN that bought the rights. Its BAMTech who are partly owned by Major League Baseball, the NHL as well as ESPN. We do not know what their long term plans are streaming sports in the US. We could be looking at a 'Pay Service' down the line. As much crap we give beIN for what could justifiably be call "lack of professionalism", be careful what you wish for when it comes to "niche" soccer properties which includes Serie A and Ligue-1 who have their rights expiring at the end of this season.

SA
ww.soccertvblog.com

 

Really at this point if you have ESPN3 and you don't have one of the numerous and inexpensive devices to stream it to your TV set it's on you rather than on the networks. With Roku sticks, Fire sticks, Chromecasts and the like as cheap as $25 and which take little more space than any other HDMI input, plus the myriad # of other devices that will stream ESPN3 (such as the XBox, PlayStation, etc), there's no reason to complain. This isn't 5 years ago when you needed to run an HDMI cable from your computer.

 

As a subscriber to both MLB.tv and NHL.tv and a frequent user of WatchESPN, this is wonderful news. Also, if this group gets the rights to Serie A or Ligue 1, I will gladly pay ESPN a monthly or annual fee for a streaming service to be able to have games on demand without having to hear the shrill, irritating voices of Cordero and Bonnetti ever again.

 

Most internet-only plans used to include ESPN3 (i remember time warner cable was a notable exception). Is this no longer true?