I'm not so sure about that. All FOX shows on Saturdays are some NASCAR Busch Series (the tier 2 series) (up to July), baseball (primarily after the all-star game I think), and that's it. They don't show college football or basketball at all, which is the primary soccer killer I think. MLB and NASCAR both usually start around 1:00 on the east coast (except for the west coast games/races), so the 4:00 time slot (or perhaps moved to 5:00) would be available most of the time. As an example, they have no sports on today. Now whether the interest is there is certainly open to question, but I think MLB and NASCAR can be worked around so that if the desire is there, the scheduling room is available.
ABC has always been good to soccer even from NASL days when Pele played for Cosmos, they did give soccer a few brakes but if the rating is not there no sport in the world can be helped. Also soccer has a hard time getting accecpted by mid America the Football country that it will take a long time to get them to watch soccer on tv if notting else on the tube.
Ohh, I know that none of the networks would actually bid for these rights. What I mean is that some networks, like NBC, probably wouldn't mind setting up a deal like the one they did with NHL, to show some WCQ's. Anyway, I'd imagine that the price for those rights are a lot lower than the NHL, or any other American sports league. Is it wrong for me to wish such things??
Production cost is the main issue. Arena Football and NHL production costs may be recouped from advertising. Almost impossible to recoup costs to do MLS/USMNT games because there are no commercials, so every channel expects that SUM and/or Winnercomm will take that cost. Since no network affiliate or cable company will pay to carry those games since there aren't many non-Mexican soccer fans in this country, the expectation is that SUM will buy the air-time. In return, SUM gets to keep the excess ad revenue from the official sponsors (the ones with sideline advertising), if there is any.
It would probably cost about what it does on ABC. But airtime on ESPN 2 is MUCH cheaper, yet it reaches pretty much every home with cable or satellite, so it's a good value for SUM, Nike, Anheuser-Busch, and the few other companies who back US Soccer. On a network, you could expect an audience of about 1 million people or so, possibly a little more if Freddy is involved. That's not enough of a boost to justify the cost (ESPN 2 games probably rate similar to MLS, maybe a little better) in terms of increased advertising. It doesn't help that the fans of the other team will inevitably watch on Telemundo, which is available on basic cable in most major markets and already owns the rights to Mexico qualifiers and could easily land any other CONCACAF qualifer it wants.
I believe the October 7th game WAS shown on ABC. ABC affiliates chose what to show (news or soccer). Obviously, many showed ABC news, there was at least one ABC affiliate that had a split-screen. So, ABC cameras were rolling in Foxboro that day...
and the game was rebroadcast the next day on espn, including the post-game celebration on the field-- which went way beyond the standard 2 hour time slot. i am not sure we would have gotten that if the broadcast had run on abc live nationwide.
Soccer eventually needs to be back on ABC, that's where I became a fan of US Soccer. I'm a foreign born soccer fan but it was seeing the Nats play on ABC got me following them when I moved here. A lot of people don't have the money to have cable and soccer should be for the masses!