http://sports.yahoo.com/news/la-liga-serie-vanish-many-075912398--sow.html ''The ratings are going to be so low that they will be almost unmeasurable,'' said Marc Ganis of the Chicago-based Sports Corp. Ltd., consulting firm. ''Considering the push that European soccer is making in the United States, taking additional money and losing exposure becomes fools' gold. They need to have a long-term strategy, not short-term....'' Now that the European seasons are starting, at least some clubs are worried their leagues made a mistake by taking dollars over distribution. Complicating the matter, a dispute broke out in Spain, with some clubs saying their television rights were sold by a company that doesn't own them. ''I know Madrid and Barcelona are already concerned by what has happened domestically,'' AC Milan director Umberto Gandini said in a telephone interview. ''We were trying to maximize revenues ahead of visibility. Frankly speaking, we were not aware of such difficulties reaching viewers in the United States and the fact that we are going to be penalized highly by the difference in viewership.'' I am a cable subscriber so nothing but EPL for me. I can't stream Serie A matches on ESPN 3 anymore. I can't even pay for the privilege of streaming them on the beIn website, which I would happily have done. Thanks al Jazeera! This has nothing to do with BeIn, but to make matters worse on my Comcast system, Gol TV just got moved to a Spanish language tier. And my local Comcast just added around 30 new HD channels, including the Tennis channel and a bunch of weird stuff I did not know existed. But not Fox Soccer. So my options now are basically to watch Manchester United beat Wigan in SD every Saturday or maybe take up stamp collecting.
I just read the article on ESPN and was going to ask how much of that article is just media beef and how much is genuine concern?But now I realize it's an AP article, not ESPN. Nevertheless... Though BeIN might deserve some of the criticism for lack of understanding what they were getting into; However I don't understand why most of that criticism is not directed at the providers who so far have not picked up the new TV channel. Beside DirecTV most of those providers have been making soccer fans go through hoops to be able to watch their favorite sport. Some only make the soccer channels available in specific regions, some don't care to add HD to the channels, some require that you get Latino package to get soccer channels, and some just flat out remove indefinitely some soccer channels from their packages. All of that, way before BeIN came into the picture. People act like La Liga & Serie A matches were available to the whole US audience before BeIN Sport came into the picture. One was on GolTV (a niche channel, not available on all providers) and FSC (which treated Serie A as an afterthought). And also the article make it sound like their will not be any future providers of BeIN Sport channels.
You can't blame the providers really. You really should be blaming the leagues because they knew well ahead that BeIn was a completely new channel. They should have understood that USA television is completely different than Europe. They failed to do their homework and will pay when fans that could watch their leagues jump ship and become fans of EPL teams because they can actually watch the games.
Are you including Dish here? If so, what are they doing? Honest questions, I don't have either Dish or DirecTV but am paying attention...slowly starting to consider satellite. They do seem to pick up the new channels a lot quicker than Comcast.
At least there was FoxSoccer.tv, so Serie A was pretty much available to everyone. I've only just started paying attention to this whole BeIN situation - do they have any plans to launch a similar service to FS.tv? Doesn't sound that way in the OP, but there's always hope.
As it relates to BeIN, Dish does carry it... They had however dropped GolTV for a while now, which was why I switched to DirecTV. For soccer fans, DirecTV is definitely the place to be. They carry all the english channels (you just need to subscribe to Sports Package for $13/m). Plus they have dedicated channels for UEFA CL & EL games. During the Olympics they had a soccer dedicated channel where they showed every single game from London 2012.
This. If you watch a lot of soccer, or sports in general, DirecTV is the way to go. No, I don't work for them or anything, I'm just a very satisfied customer.
If I didn't love Fios so much I would switch to DTV. It really is the best destination for sports fans but it's not the cheapest either. I'm sure Fios will get it by the end of the year at the latest(at least I hope). Fios also had a dedicated basketball/soccer channel for the Olympics. Until I'm able to watch the games on TV, it looks like I'm back to finding quality internet streams.
Directv is great for sports. However, they are very pricy so Directv has become the Apple of Pay tv. This is the first time that directv is getting premium dollars for a sport channel, but they normally over pay for sport programming and then it gets transfer to their subscribers. La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Conmebol took the money and ran. Ligue 1 has a win win situation, they are getting premium dollar and better exposure in the States, however, La Liga and Serie A are losing a great deal of exposure and probably future tour dollars advertising dollars. All can change in a heart beat: beIN can buy Goltv, and pay more money to TWC, Comcast, AT&T and Verison. So beIN is going to loss a great deal of money on year One, and possibly year two and three, but they can be the winners in the long run. However, this start up is up a mediocre start, but it could have been worse. Now on the issue of HD broaasting, I believe this is a capacity issue, and there is not quick fix at this point. Nonetheless, under the right circumstances, all of this can be fixed, and that is to buy Goltv.
You win some, you lose some. Dish (Latino) does have Univision Deportes (and UD2) so I do get Copa MX games. But yes I do miss GOLTV.