The 2022 MLS TV thread

Telemundo / Peacock drew ~3.6 million for a total of about 16.6 million for USA v Netherlands.

— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) December 5, 2022

Over hyped meaningless game against England drew better... Oh well

 

Those two things are not in tension with one another, the latter is a big reason for the former.

 

Not exactly a soccer nation when less than 5% are tuning in. The notion that MLS should try and convert Euro snobs with pro/rel because so many won't watch just seems to be a myth. You could probably cut that number in half to folks that watched this game who are casual USMNT soccer fans and say that the rest follow various leagues. The course of trying to catch leagues in this hemisphere including other pro American sports leagues is the only goal MLS should have for now in my opinion. Keep building the academies and just focus on increasing revenue seems the best strategy going forward.

 

It's the only strategy there ever has been or ever will be, the bedeviling question is how?

 

Not a sports nation at all then since this is drawing at world series and NBA finals ratings. Here, NFL is what the world cup is in other nations.

 

Fox Sports’ US World Cup coverage is an unmissable abomination https://t.co/KHAWIMOpIY

— The Guardian (@guardian) December 5, 2022

 

To me, the main issue is their nonstop praise of Qatar. Everything else is very much bearable.

 

I dunno man, remember how much better ESPN's coverage was?

Primarily thinking of the studio shows. The Fox match commentators are okay, and I think that article is being a bit unfair on Stu Holden, but the studio shows are a disaster.

 

Found out something interesting today about the AppleTV deal. Each free subscription given to the STHs is being paid for to Apple from MLS. So from Apple's POV every one of those STH subscriptions counts just like any other for their bottom line.

 

Oh yeah that always seemed implicit. And of course, when you say it's being paid by MLS, that is to say it's being built into the cost of season tickets and paid by the fans themselves.

 

Nope, but I do remember the exact same articles being written about ESPN. And the same nonsense saying the best commentators were coincidentally the ones with British accents.

As for the studio shows, they aren't stupid accidentally. Everyone is trying to imitate NBA on TNT and it's cast of clowns.

 

That's exactly right. The trouble is, a World Cup is not a random NBA Thursday night, and Chuck and Kenny are veteran TV personalities who are entertaining and have great chemistry with each other, and really do offer a pulse of the sport you're watching, in their way.

As those guys become older and further from the game and more dinosaur-ish in their views the show isn't what it once was, but regardless what it once was was inimitable.

But they try anyway, because the goal is to have the studio show be an independent source of viral social media clips, rather than being fit to purpose as a halftime show for viewers of the game.

The EPL on NBC show consistently enriches the experience of watching the game with good, serious analysis, gets through the highlights and gets outta there, it's not a ton of content so they can run more commercials. That is the way.

 

Fox coverage seems fine to me, and I don’t remember anything special about ESPN other than they always did a nice sendoff recap at the very end.

 

Not exactly true since this could be written off as an advertising & promotion expense.

 

The "Inside the NBA" show on TNT has actually seen ratings increase in recent years, despite how old the ex players are getting.

Michelle Beadle, who used to work for ESPN on their NBA pre/post game show, did an interview with Ariel Helwani not too long ago and they spent some time discussing why the TNT show is so successful and the ESPN show has never caught on.

She pointed out some obvious things.

1. TNT has an adult with authority, Ernie Johnson, as the person who corrals the guys when needed and keeps them on track every night.

2. TNT, for quite a long time, just covered the NBA so they didn't have the corporate structure where everyone is trying to use any opportunity they get to climb the ladder and throw anyone else under the bus on the way to the top.

3. Related to both those points, TNT allowed their crew to spend years together working on their chemistry. Ernie Johnson started on the show in the 1990-91 season. Kenny Smith joined in 1998, Barkley in 2000, and Shaq in 2011. That puts the junior member of the crew at over a decade of working with them.

The show is usually a top 5 show in the ratings for TNT every week. There have been times where, as the post game show, it has actually pulled better ratings than the game it follows.

Can MLS learn from both Inside the NBA and the EPL on NBC show to find the right host, try out some analysts, and then give everyone long enough to form something entertaining and cohesive? That could go a long way towards helping the league's image with more casual sports fans.

 

It FEELS like MLS and Apple are barking up the right tree with what they want to roll out in the new deal. It's also crystal clear they're behind the 8-ball and what we see in March will be a beta test at best, but that's not the end of the world. Start from a solid understanding of what you're trying to do over the long term and iterate your way there.

To be frank and reductive about it, whether Alexi Lalas has any part of the Apple coverage will tell us a lot.

 

I hope that Apple covers a fair bit of the preseason to test run what they have before the start of the season.

 

My favorite part of this stupid article is when this idiot attempts to draw a distinction between US and British coverage of the Cup by comparing the US broadcast to the invasion of Iraq, in which Britain famously played no part at all!

 

This is somewhat a big deal: USA vs Netherlands beat some NFL games in the demo and total. 5.5 million 18-49 for the world cup match beat Bills at Patriots (but that was on Amazon and doesn't factor in local TV), Steelers vs Colts (but that was on ESPN, not broadcast) and the local coverage NFL on CBS 1 PM window. Keep in mind that by most metrics, the NFL is the most popular league in the world (within their own country).

Oh and it also beat EVERY college football game (it was conference championship weekend).

 

Andrew Marchand of the New York Post and John Ourand of SBJ do a weekly sports media podcast and in the one that dropped this morning Marchand indicated that it was trending toward Fox only for a linear TV deal with MLS at a low rights fee. It was presented as news but it seemed more of a report based on sourced rumors. Marchand is pretty plugged in and a big soccer fan.

Said Fox wasn’t bothered by the Apple branding and I guess because they don’t really have a streaming service they probably don’t care the games are on Apple TV too.

 

Interesting. If true, I think that would make 2023 the first year in the history of the league without ESPN as a broadcaster. Seems like the end of an era. Onward with the start of the new streaming era with Apple.

 

It’s interesting that in the last month or so listening to some of these sports business and media podcasts that the narrative has shifted such that after football and the NBA, there is not much must-have rights that sell subscriptions. Even then they question was it worth it for Amazon to spend to get the NFL even if they can afford it. And for streamers once you have enough mass to get that say 8.99 a month, how many more rights do you need? MLS missed its sweet spot by 18 months IMO, most of the services and networks already signed enough soccer rights and don’t need any more. And local rights values probably lower now than before since the RSN financial model is mostly crumbling with cord cutting (BTW, if Bally’s Sports Networks goes bankrupt, it will put a hole in major sports teams revenues). Disney/ESPN in cost cutting mode didn’t help.

For better or worse, MLS is all in with Apple on the broadcast side. Basically an experiment to go almost total streaming and mostly paywall for an entire US league

 

Shameless re-upping of my own point from earlier.

All MLS wants here is meaningful linear carriage of its biggest events. That's the only thing the relationship with Apple isn't capable of supporting.

 

Will Fox actually put apple branded games on the big Fox?? Or is MLS heading to FS2?

 

I can't really see any benefit to a FS2 deal. You don't go to FS2 in this situation where you are simply seeking to maintain some broader exposure, that network is for junk and re-airs.