I'll just plop this here According to an industry source, UEFA is not satisfied with Turner Sports' coverage of the Champions League.— World Soccer Talk (@worldsoccertalk) October 24, 2019
Brain dead idiots. Why are they acting surprised that the coverage of their babies are downhill? 4 games a week compared to having 90% of the games on TV in the last deal was always gonna lead to this
Not even UEFA cares what UEFA thinks. If Turner turns out to be the highest bidder tomorrow, they would still give them the rights in a heartbeat.
I bet that "not satisfied" means that they don't play the CL anthem loud enough and in its entirety. Or they don't show the sponsors enough or something. I can't see them actually caring about Kate Abdo and Steve Nash - or putting matches behind streaming paywalls.
Hopefully it's done after the 2021 season. There is definitely a limit to the bid price vs availability issue and Turner has pissed them off. They can't be too pleased that an entire competition is paywalled and will likely decrease it's profile that was low to begin with.
I agree with this. I think the paywall diminishes the exposure to UEFA's products, advertisers, etc. And I think that's fundamentally important to them. UCL/UEL coverage hasn't been this poor in I can't remember when. Fox did a much better job. And ESPN, that's hard to remember but I think they did too... I think they used multiple on-air channels IIRC... at least for Champions League. I have no clue about Europa/UEFACup back then because during that time my team was actually good and it wasn't even a factor for me... oh have times have changed in so many ways.
Almost all European soccer matches on in the US are paywalled. Cable TV is a (huge) paywall. The Europa League thing is pretty crappy for cable subscribers, I agree. But people without cable can watch every CL and EL match for $10 a month or a la carte and over-the-top. It's not the worst thing from an access perspective. NBC's is worse for sure because Gold is not inclusive.
ESPN did not. In the 90s I recall it being one match per week on ESPN2, they picked Tuesday or Wednesday. Then I believe they went to Tuesday and Wednesday on ESPN2. And Deportes wasn't even launched til '04. And was the UEFA Cup split off and shown on FSC or maybe exclusively on DirecTV - I can't remember.
As long as the checks clear, UEFA couldn't care less if you showed only one match online and never showed the rest of the matches period. If they could be sure that the Asian markets would outspend European outlets altogether for rights to Champions League games, and they wanted one match per round to start at 8pm in China, you can bet your ass it would happen. Money papers over a lot of cracks for UEFA.
Yeah, and what was frustrating back in the late 90s/early-mid 00s was the announcers (usually JP & Tommy Smyth) would also do promos for the other UCL matches on ESPN International, which of course we couldn't get.
That's right! I always remember it being Derek Rae touting the other games that you could be watching at 13:45 AST (2:45 ET) if only you lived in the West Indies.
There was also promos for a show called “Press Pass” (I.e. today’s ESPN FC) available for “our international audience only”. “And more Champions League action tomorrow, Barcelona v Chelsea for those of you in the Pacific Rim.” Can’t tell you how many times I got so ticked off hearing the number of games the international audience were able to watch. UEFA Cup was on the old Fox Sports World. I remember that incredible Liverpool v Alaves final that I couldn’t watch in English because my cable system didn’t offer FSW but I got to watch it in Spanish since I had Fox Sports Espanol.
I doubt that Warner will return. And ESPN has other priorities than European soccer. Fox and NBC have open schedules during midweek. DAZN could make a strong bid.
I remember GOLTV carrying the UEFA cup for a while. (They also carried an occasional Champions League Wualifying Round match.) As I recall, when Fox won the rights to the Champions League previously held by ESPN, one of the requirements reported was that they wanted the holder to have multiple channels to show several games each match day and Fox, with FS1, FS2, FoxDeportes and FSPlus met the requirements well. I wonder if UEFA looked at Warner's coverage of the College Basketball Tournament utilizing TNT, TBS and TruTV, and figured there would be plenty of coverage on those widely-distributed channels. Perhaps they did not figure that instead, most games would be stremed behind a paywall.
I'm sure UEFA employs capable attorneys in negotiating and drafting its multi-million dollar rights agreements and if it was important for them to require multi-channel cable exposure from the US English-language rights holder they would have had that in the contract.
This is true and I think you are right. But you never know. When the contract was signed I think the B/R Streaming service was only an idea and not in existence yet so it would be weird to discuss online streaming within a negotiation when they only had TNT and TBS digital platforms at the time that only seemed to simulcast the network feeds
Neither UEFA nor any other Football Association/body looks at streaming as a "negative". And neither should you. It's the future of football - and the future is now. Whether you like your football available on a streaming device or nicely bundled in your cable/satellite package is a completely different discussion and a matter of personal taste and/or convenience. UEFA does like to see at least one Champions League match (as well as National Team matches) on terrestrial TV - especially in Europe where it is very common place. And you can argue that TNT fills that role in the US. But I would really encourage you to ignore whether a service is a streaming service or a traditional one when trying to predict where the UEFA competitions - or any other - will end up. It just doesn't matter in some of the biggest markets for the sport in Europe and Asia. It sure as hell doesn't matter in the US. SA
Are there any accurate, publicly available numbers which compare the number of people who subscribe to B/R streaming vs who get TNT/TBS on their TV lineups?
I'm not sure what the point of this comp would be. TNT is in about 90 million American homes. But for purposes of the Champs League and advertisers is only viewed by ~150k-500k per game. And TNT's CL matchweek afternoons are full of matches and content. For B/R Live, the ROI is met as soon as people sign up and pay - so not really based on advertising or how many watch a certain match. And let's not forget that Univision channels add to the reach. In this current UEFA deal (counting Uni) there are about 6-8 CL and EL unique matches on US cable/sat TV per week. Even though B/R Live is over-the-top, its point isn't all that different from NBC w/ Gold. The biggest matches are available on TV and the extremely low number of super users can find overflow matches on the premium plattform.
Point taken about different revenue capturing in TV vs streaming. I was just thinking that UEFA wants more eyeballs to see more matches, as well as whatever form of advertising they put out, even if it's just the ad boards around the pitch. And I was wondering if B/R Live viewership numbers come anywhere close to what they get on TNT?
Depends who's streaming it. Italy was begging to get off of beIN because their streaming was poor(getting better now) and interest in their league was dwindling. Eleven Sports in England had no profile and limited experience running a major streaming operation and I'm guessing leagues will not be making this same mistake for a while. UEFA will want to be somewhere that gets the money in the door and also keeps the old customers in the door and attracts new ones. I'm guessing they have issues when clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal are in the Europa league and there are only 10k(guess) watching it in English. Especially since they have shown interest in a 3rd competition. That's it's own issue, but they aren't in the business of devaluing their competition. Guessing they don't allow that to happen again where the entire league is paywalled.
Definitely not. But not really the point of B/R Live even though they do offer the TNT matches. Would be interesting to see the B/R streaming numbers vs Watch TNT vs Univision streaming though -- just as a nerd .
If I get the B/R subscription, will it show up on my cable tv listing (so I can just record it on my DVR) or do I have to stream it on my phone/computer and mirror it on my TV screen? Same question for ESPN+. Thanks.
And what's the deal with buying just one match to stream? Arsenal are playing in Europa at the odd time of Weds 10:50am ET. No TUDN broadcast possible at that time b/c of their CL commitments. So it's either B/R Live or a pirated stream.