This has probably been gone over before but why did FSC go HD then add FSP in SD? I know that some live matches are carried in HD on DTV channel 621-1 but why don't they just broadcast all shows in HD on one channel?
That's a business choice of DirecTV. Other cable providers have the full-time HD version of FSP but DirecTV didn't have enough bandwidth to spare so they left it as a live game-time only HD channel.
This move by DirecTV may have been the reason why FSC almost always has the "A" game and FS+ almost always has the "B" game when two games are shown simultaneously: 1. Saturday 1500 London Time EPL matches: FSC now has the team with the bigger brand (Chelsea or Arsenal) compared to FS+ (i.e. Man City or Tottenham). When Setanta Sports USA was in business, Setanta always had the team with the bigger "brand" compared to FSC. 2. Sunday 1430 London Time EPL/1600 CET Serie A: notice that FSC got the Stoke-Man Utd EPL match while FS+ got the Bologna-Juventus Serie A match last Sunday, the first time FSC took the "early" Sunday EPL match instead of the regular Serie A match. 3. UEFA Champions League on Tuesdays at 2045 CET: notice that FSC had Real Madrid-AC Milan while FS+ had Auxerre-Ajax (FSN got Arsenal-Shakhtar Donetsk) on Match Day 3. For Match Day 4, FSC will have Tottenham-Inter while FS+ will have Valencia-Rangers (FSN will have Bursaspor-Man Utd) FSC needs to show as much "big clubs" such as Man Utd as possible in order to keep its average viewership high enough so that pay TV operators will be willing to move FSC from the sports tier to an expanded digital tier.
Unless FSC dumps the rights to any of their properties after next season (Serie A and FA Cup are both signed for at least one season beyond 2011-12), my guess as to where this is heading is that eventually foxsoccer.tv will have the capacity to stream virtually everything. Carriage deals may force FSC to keep its live games TV-exclusive for the time being, but what currently airs on FS+ may simply become online-only.
I am not sure why Directv customers pay $15, while TWC subscribers get it as part of their Paratodos package and Sport tier. At this point, I do not see a logical reason to charge $15 for this channel.
FSI has Serie A, English FA Cup/Community Shield/National Team, Ligue 1, and UEFA Champions League/UEFA Super Cup through the 2011-2012 season. (GOLTV Inc.'s deals for La Liga, Copa del Rey, and Bundesliga/DFL Supercup are also through the 2011-2012 season. Ditto DIRECTV's deal for the UEFA Europa League.) The only product FSI has through the 2012-2013 season is English Premier League. == Expect all heck to break loose between Sportel Monaco 2011 (October) and Sportel Asia 2012 (March), when a whole bunch of soccer video rights for the U.S. market will be auctioned off.
Can you elaborate on this? What role do these 2 companies currently play in the US and what role would they seek to play? Are we staring down the barrel of the PPV gun (again) with these other companies or are they just looking to become brokers who re-sell the coverage to the current stations?
Deals for soccer video rights tend to be done either during or after the Sportel Monaco trade show each October. The Sportel trade show in March alternates between Miami (in odd years) and a Chinese-speaking city in East Asia (in even years). The "hot spot" of activity in March 2009 was the Sportel Americas trade show in Miami, when FSI surprised ESPN, Inc. with its bold bids for rights to UEFA Champions League/Super Cup in Spanish-speaking Latin America/Caribbean and the U.S. All the other deals (GOLTV's deals for La Liga and Bundesliga, DIRECTV's deal for the Europa League, etc.) were done after the show. I expect Sportel Monaco in October 2011 to be the hot spot of activity during the next round of international soccer video rights bidding.