News: Thursday, Aug 17 , 2017

D.C. United is signing another goalkeeper. Here’s why …

Washington Post

 

Huge news-- We are so used to watching Champions League/Europa League on Fox, but Turner now has the rights starting next season. It will be weird to now watch those games on TNT and TBS. I wonder who they will hire as a soccer broadcast team? I hope they're not thinking that the basketball or baseball announce team will do just fine. I will miss Wynalda and Lalas in the studio desk.

I guess Fox thought that in the long run the expense was not worth the viewership numbers they were getting for their Champions League games? The weekday afternoon time slot for Champions League games is always problematic. But if I remember correctly FS1 and FS2 would re-run the game later that evening as well. I guess even then the numbers were not as high as Fox had hoped? All this brings to mind a follow up question--will Fox be willing to re-up the EPL rights when they come up?

excerpt from article

 

I remember Ernie Johnson was the anchor for World Cup coverage in 1990 when it was on TNT.

 

I don't think it is so much that Fox did not value the product at current levels as that Turner came in with a significant rights increase, about double what the rights were formerly worth:
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2017/02/20/Media/Turner-UEFA.aspx

 

......and this is where that seven year FOX deal is problematic. Understood why they did it, but wondered what would happen if more players got into the soccer game.

For all the good decisions MLS has made this one is becoming more suspect each passing year. Oh well.

 

True--but if it was really worth it to them they would have at least matched the bid from Turner or outbid it by 1 or 2 million. Now that a new money threshold has been reached for the US transmission rights--the next time the rights are up for bid they definitely will not cost less, so either way Fox is looking at paying more if they want to stay in the soccer broadcasting business.

Your point is well made. The question MLS has to figure out is how much demand for their product is there out there? With cities tripping over themselves at trying to court Garber for an expansion team, with the new Adidas deal, and with Forbes listing increases in the value of MLS clubs it makes me think that MLS is entering a whole new era in its history. Despite all that, tv ratings continue to not be as big as most soccer fans and the Commish would like, although they are bigger than they were in the NBC Sports era. Just for the sake of comparison UEFA just got 100 mil for 3 years from Turner. MLS currently gets 75 mil per season from ESPN/Fox combined and another 15 mil from Univision. That's about 90 mil per season and that number does not include whatever MLS is getting from TSN and TVA up in Canada! The difference is that the MLS contract is much longer as it runs for 7 years. Would networks be willing to pay up obscene amounts of cash for a much shorter period of rights ownership? Then again, where will the league be 4 years from now? Did anyone even think we would be at the point we are at now 5 years ago?

 

About the JD Power survey:

MLS fan experience is the best, edging out the NHL. The NFL is the worst, with its top performer coming in fourth in a seven team market. Because the NFL doesn't need each attendee as much, they're less driven to provide a great stadium experience. If a season ticket holder doesn't renew, there's someone else behind them to buy the open tickets. MLS and NHL teams can't shrug off these losses.

 

Turner is also starting a new digital subscription service, and they're looking for content that inspires some loyalty, where the customer will pay for the service to get it. Unfortunately, soccer seems pretty ideal for this sort of thing, as the up-slide from people who care for the sport at all to those who will pay real money to order games seems pretty steep (that is, you have the loyal fans, but not the tens of millions of casual ones).

Fox may not so much have turned soccer down at the price as they might have been caught flat-footed by just how much Turner wanted to do this. I mean, the UCL contract is enormous when you consider that most of the games air on a Tuesday afternoon.

 

I like this change. The fourth sub would be available in extra time, if the playoff round goes there. I feel like it helps create the fresh/tired mismatches that increase the chance of memorable extra time goals.

 

I wonder if any post-season game gets to Kicks From the Mark if they'll use the new ABBA order or not.

 

You're right, given the bad time slot the amount of money being paid is tremendous.
This whole situation reminds me of fox soccer plus or setanta sports USA--although soccer pay channels do eventually find some people who are willing to pay, it seems to me that it is a small part of the soccer viewing public. Those pay channels were not exactly enormous successes when compared to the normal cable soccer channels (Fox,Bein, ESPN, and in the past NBC Sports, GolTV), and the situation gets even worse when you consider that we're talking about a potential streaming service. I can easily see the streaming service getting hacked and people logging in for free or mirror sites being set up where people can watch the games for free. They may wind up losing a lot of money on the deal.

 

MLS needs two or three national games a week on over the air or commonly watched cable channels at good times. UEFA CL is a different animal.

 

It's not surprising that NFL fans have more problems entering and leaving stadiums than MLS fans is it? There are 80,000 cramming to get in and out.

 

That would be their Waterloo.

 

Regarding the 7 year TV deal, correct me if I'm wrong or if I mis-remembered, but I thought that ESPN and Fox knowingly overpaid for MLS/USMNT TV rights so MLS could use some of that money to improve the squads a little bit to make it more pleasing to the eye/more viewers. They know that there are a shitload of viewers of the European leagues out there, they're hoping to attract a few of those eyeballs

The TV networks would have longer control than normal to help promote the growing game of soccer in this country and make their money back at the tail end of the TV deal when the league's popularity would outgrow the value of the yearly contract. Their prediction came through and their investment paid off. A big part of the reason that MLS is stronger today was because of that investment and consistent exposure. Moving most of the games to Friday and Saturday meant that the 2 or 3 televised matches on Sunday had lots of MLS fans available to watch instead of being out of the house watching their local team. It's not perfect but it's the best set-up that they've been able to come up with so far. Fox Sports 1 and 2 will usually have replays of their matches which is cool.

Also, in an attempt to grow the game as a whole, a bit of unity between the two rival networks as they started doing cross-network promotions in MLS matches. Now you see it in all of the sports but I'm pretty sure it started years ago in the NBA between NBC and the TBS/TNT combo.

 

It's also that the rights deals for every sport has gone up to the point it's almost impossible for one or two entities to keep all of them.

 

Well, if the NFL stadiums have more gates, what difference would it make?

I went to an NFL game in about 2002. It's an awful, awful experience live because of the commercial breaks. And that was BEFORE the hellish score/timeout/kickoff/timeout/game came into use. That's why I never watch an NFL game live, always DVR them. You can watch an NFL game in about 1:10.

Sometimes I'll look at the recording's time bar, and there will be 1 play in 7 minutes. On rare occasion, when there's a long scoring drive right before the end of the 1st or 3rd quarter, they'll come back from the kickoff and run 1 or 2 plays and then do more TV timeouts. You might have 3 plays in almost 15 minutes, with one of them being a touchback on the kickoff.

 

I don't think that survey included aspects of the sport itself. I think the game experience had more to do overall experience while watching the game. Having Red Bulls' Ultras kick you out of your seat then throw beer on families sitting beneath them is not a good game experience.

(The survey actually people watched more NFL this season).

Fan satisfaction is evaluated across seven factors (in order of importance): seating area and game experience; security and ushers; leaving the game; arriving at the game; food and beverage; ticket purchase; and souvenirs and merchandise. Satisfaction is measured on a 1,000-point scale.

Additional factors that are measured but not included in the official ranking are loyalty and future intentions; team performance (on-field); and team image.

 

Sometimes you gotta take a chance.