No less than 5 Cup Finals this coming Saturday (and 1 more on Sunday). Here is the lineup: Scotland - 10:00am Inverness v Falkirk... ....LIVE: GOL-TV England - 12:30pm Arsenal v Aston Villa.... ...LIVE: Fox Network + Fox Deportes Germany - .2:30pm B. Dortmund v Wolfsburg.......LIVE: espn3 (ESPN Deportes/7:00pm) France - .3:00pm AJ Auxerre v PSG..... ..LIVE: beINSport-1 & ñ + TV5 Spain - .3:30pm Barcelona v Atletic Bilbao.......LIVE: ESPN2 + ESPN Deportes Sunday: Portugal - 12:00pm Sporting Lisbon v Sporting Braga.......LIVE: GOL-TV SA www.soccertvblog.com
I find it hard to reconcile this fact with the idea being put forward by others that ESPN would not be interested in La Liga rights.
Not to thread-jack here but ESPN has other priorities. During College football season La Liga soccer would be relegated to ESPN Deportes and ESPN 3. A step backwards compared to BEIN.
The "idea being put forward" is based on a direct quote from the ESPN Deportes general manager: http://worldsoccertalk.com/2015/03/...-tv-rights-to-begin-shortly-for-2015-18-deal/ Maybe if Univision gets the Spanish rights, ESPN gets the English? But if that's the case it would probably be one game per week on TV and the rest online and you'll never see a game not featuring Barça or Madrid. (Which really isn't any different than BeIN English and at least watchespn is much more accessible than BeIN connect and works a million times better with apps on all devices.)
ESPN has had the rights to the Copa del Rey Final since at least 2010 that I know of. ESPN having the Final and them being interested in La Liga are two mutually exclusive events. BTW, the reason they have the Final is that the rights are being sold separately from the rest of the tournament and are handled by Santa Monica Sports Group with whom ESPN has a very close relationship. I doubt beIN were even given a chance to bid - especially considering the fact that they are willing to throw crazy money for anything La Liga related. SA www.soccertvblog.com
I read that espn deportes ruled themselves out for la liga, so wouldnt that rule espn out for englsih language rights? http://worldsoccertalk.com/2015/03/...-focus-on-covering-variety-of-soccer-leagues/
Network available in 100M homes vs. network available in 16M homes. I don't think "step backwards" means what you think it means.
It does not matter how many homes it is available in if they are showing College football instead of Spanish Soccer.
College football and La Liga overlap on Saturday afternoon between Labor Day and the weekend after Thanksgiving. That's it. ESPN has 6 US channels. Count them. At most, 3 of those channels show college football on Saturday afternoon, leaving 3 channels without college football. The least available ESPN Channel is ESPN Classic with 25.5M homes, which is still 50% higher than the household carriage of BeIN Sports: ESPN 94,4M ESPN CLASSIC 25,5M ESPN2 94,4M ESPNEWS 72M ESPNU 73,6M So even if Spanish soccer were relegated to ESPNews and ESPN Classic on Fall Saturdays, it would still be much more widely available than it is now on BeIN Sports. So you're just flat out wrong.
ESPN would have to show interest in order for me to be wrong. BEIN is putting up the money where their mouth is. ESPN has other priorities.
ESPN Classic does not exist in HD, and it is being converted from a linear channel to an on demand service. Dish has already dropped it and DirecTV is in the process of doing so. ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU all show college gridiron football all day Saturday during college gridiron football season. ESPN News shows highlights of all the games on ESPN and other networks on Saturday mornings during college gridiron football season. So basically on Saturday, La Liga would get coverage on ESPN Deportes and ESPN3.
ESPN would televise Real Madrid and Barcelona games (IF the schedule permitts) and everything else would go online and be behind bowling, lacrosse, or 6th hour of Spotscenter, during the fall or spring. To me, that's a step backward. Yes, more people would see La liga but fewer games would be televised. I don't like that. There is another equally big cup final on Saturday that they are not televising on any of their 4-5 channels but showing online, involving what I would consider two big clubs. And it is freaking end of May with nothing else on tv... How many times did they show Bayern this year midweek when nothing else was on tv? Zero times. ESPN is good for big competitions but would suck for covering leagues for big soccer fans.
That's about a third of the La Liga season but it could be fewer than a third of the games because of the breaks for national teams in September, October, and November. One good thing about competing with college football is that the TV channels tell teams what time to play as the season goes along, so if Barcelona and/or Real Madrid played at 12:00 P.M. or 2:00 P.M. ESPN could schedule less attractive college football games for 12:00 P.M. that day. Florida State has their start times announced for the first 3 out of 12 games so far.
ESPN bought the rights to the Copa del Rey ESPN sub-licensed rights to Champions League from Fox ESPN sub-licensed rights to the Premier League from Fox ESPN has had right to La Liga in the past Sum that up and ESPN has shown plenty of interest in European club soccer and Spanish soccer in particular. BeIN is a failed project and at some point they will stop throwing good money after bad.
So even if ESPN Classic goes away, with ESPN News, ESPN Deportes and ESPN3, ESPN has far more capacity to deliver La Liga to far more people than BeIN ever will.
Even if that were true, how is that any different from the situation with BeIN now? They only reliably show Real Madrid and Barcelona on the English-language channel; all other La Liga matches are on the Spanish channel. So if ESPN had the rights, you would see RM and Barcelona on ESPN2 and everything else on ESPN Deportes/ESPN3 (in English). All with far greater distribution than BeIN could ever hope to achieve. It would a net win for US soccer fans. 1. It competes directly with the Spanish Cup final. 2. There is far greater interest in the US in Barcelona vs. anybody than Dortmund vs. Wolfsburg. 3. I think ESPN believes there is very little interest in German domestic soccer in the US. They are likely correct in that belief. OTOH, ESPN knows that the two most popular European clubs in the US are RM and Barca.
Its actually a lot less than that because the scheduling problem only affects Saturdays, not Sundays. The main part of the college football season (Labor Day through the weekend after Thanksgiving) is 13 weeks long. If you assume that there are two international breaks during that period, then you are talking 11 Saturdays out of a 38 week season (Saturdays plus Sundays), or 76 week-end match days. So 11 days out of 76 is what we are talking about.
Your logic is so flawed that I can't even criticize it.... Listen guys, what we have here is a classic QUALITY VS QUANTITY debate. If quality is more important to you and you only care about the top 2/3 clubs in La Liga, then a network like ESPN or Fox or NBC are your choice. If quantity is your priority, then you are "happy" with beINSport's coverage. Very important to note that I put "happy" in quotation marks. I recognize that beIN can greatly improve their coverage of the league. While they provide all matches in HD and in 2 languages, they obviously do not have the pull of the big networks to have their product as widely accessible as it should be. Blame the providers; blame beIN. You'd be right in either case. I'm in the camp of hoping beIN retain the rights for at least another 3 years. Here's my arguments: 1. I'm in the quantity camp and as a DirecTV customer, I get both channels in HD and access to beinsportsconnect.tv. In other words, I get basically EVERY match during the season. I wish DirecTV would add the SAP option for "espanyol" but that is up to DirecTV and I cannot fault beIN. 2. I'm a realist. If you are going to convince yourself that ESPN, Fox, NBC, Univision et al are going to provide all the matches the way beIN does, you are free to do so. I want no part of your delusion. 3. If beIN lose La Liga they become what GOL-TV became 3 years ago. A channel dropped by most providers (or in DirecTV's case, taking away the "HD"). So assuming beIN retain Serie A and Ligue-1 rights (let alone the South American qualifiers) all of those games become available on a hard to find channel. Might as well go back to streams. The reality is that beIN WILL retain the rights for La Liga. This is true for 2 reasons: One, they have the financial might of Al Jazeera behind them. I am sure the 2 channels are looked at simply as a part of the overall inventory of channels that provide services across the globe. Reason two, beIN cannot afford to lose La Liga. As I mentioned above, they understand the fate their channel will receive if they lose La Liga from GOL-TV's experience. With these things in mind, I look at which battle would I want to fight for the next 3 years? On one hand, do I want to write about the lack of coverage of say, Getafe or Villareal due to ESPN or some other network showing college sports (or NASCAR) and in Fox's example why I am asked to dish out more money for FoxSoccer2Go to watch any La Liga team whose name isn't Real Madrid or Barcelona. OR, do I want to be pissed at beIN for not providing on-demand for their streaming service; or not using more int'l commentary feeds in place of the incessant "Magesterial" BS. I will go with a channel for whom La Liga is a priority and they will show as many matches as possible. This certainly beats (for me) having La Liga on a channel where it ranks about 10th on the priority list and will be used for fill-in programming for all but 2 matches per season. That doesn't mean I'm "happy" with beIN's current presentation of the league but there is a better chance of them growing along with the league in the US then having it treated like a second class citizen to the already established sports. SA www.soccertvblog.com
So now we've framed the debate, that's good. Now I'll present the counter-argument: I want to see every Barcelona match, in HD, in English, with NBC-style presentation, with Martin Tyler-level commentary, etc., etc., etc. (BeIN gets an F here). I don't want pay extra for #1. I couldn't care less about watching Getafe vs. Villarreal (and I bet I speak for 97% of non-Latino US soccer fans in saying that). So I don't care that much about the QUANTITY aspect -- what's much more important to me is a HIGH-QUALITY, widely available presentation of the matches involving the top teams. I'm assuming that ESPN Deportes or Fox Deportes or NBC Universo would provide equivalent Spanish-language coverage compared to what BeIN Espanol provides now. NBC and ESPN would provide much better internet/streaming coverage through NBC Live Extra/ESPN3 compared to what BeIN provides now. Unlike Fox, they would do it for no extra charge. Between #'s 4 and 5, I don't think the QUANTITY aspect would be nearly as adversely affected as you and others seem to be assuming. I think BeIN is complete amateur-hour. I don't "get" them, at all. What is their business model? What are they trying to accomplish? Why spend all that money on TV rights and then hire goons like Metellus, Schoen and Hudson to present their very expensive and valuable properties? For the love of God, why??? They're giving away dollars and pinching pennies. Agreed that BeIN is only as good as their La Liga rights. If they lose those they're finished in US television. Which makes it doubly mind-boggling that they don't treat their raison d'etre with more respect. BeIN would be much better off if they took all the money they throw away on nonsense and spent it on i) trying to improve their La Liga presentation to NBC/ESPN standards; and ii) better distribution.
Exactly right. In addition, there was the occasional game on ESPN News, typically at noon on Saturdays. So yeah, ESPN is booked on Saturdays. Once football season ends, it's time for basketball which also is typically consistent from noon to 11 PM on ESPN, ESPNU and ESPN2. The fact is that unless it's one of the summer FIFA tournaments, ESPNU doesn't show much pro competition...as they shouldn't, considering it's a "u"niversity channel.
I can remember when people on this board were making the exact same arguments (specialty channel (Fox Soccer Channel) vs. general sports network (NBC)) re the Premier League. I think 99% of us (hello, Schapes) are now very happy that NBC won the rights, even if we don't get exactly the same coverage we had with FSC. No one is going to get La Liga for free -- I'm guessing the floor for the winning bid will be in the $40MM/year range. No network is going to pay that kind of money for a property and then treat it as a second-class citizen (well, except for BeIN). I don't see RM and Barca as fill-in programming for any network. Those 2 clubs demonstrably move the needle.
...and then you have people like me who say "ESPN had Bundesliga rights this year?" Honestly, I thought those TV rights were with Gol TV.
There's more to it than that. Most of the SEC games are at 3:30 or later. The night games get selected first, regardless of conference. ESPN then selects their games with the "conference channels" such as BTN and SEC Network taking the leftovers. Typically, the Big Ten gets the noon slots on ESPN, ESPN2 and sometimes ESPNU. (Not sure who else gets noon on ESPNU.) Naturally, they want the more attractive games for ratings. I'm sure there's a little bit of a "police factor" to it as well, such as is the case with English soccer, hence the reason why some of the marquee games will never be at night. Likewise, the Big Ten just started scheduling night games in November, so weather is also a factor in when games get scheduled.
Your counter-arguments just re-enforced my point that you sit squarely in the "quality" camp, while I sit on the "quantity" side. Under best of circumstances, 80-90% of matches would end up on streaming-only with another provider. I actually don't mind it as much but you would have a heck of a lot of people ticked off at that scenario. Seriously, what you should consider is buying something like the MAG box (around $70) and just subscribing to an IPTV service that offers SkySports (which carries La Liga) as well as BTSport and many other channels from Europe. Average price is $20-$25 per month which you could hopefully save by unsubscribing to the sports package that carries beIN for you now. You will have every Barca match in HD (as good as DTV, I can attest to that) with quality English-language commentary that you are seeking. To be perfectly frank, we no longer live in a world where we are limited to our country's offerings. And from one Barca fan to another, if you need any help just pm me. SA www.soccertvblog.com
I'm talking about german cup where Espn has the rights. They had Bayern-Dortmund semifinal game on a Tuesday afternoon a month ago that was shown online only and not on any of their 5 english channels that were showing some crap at the time. I mean it was Bayern-Dortmund. Not sure what this would mean for Atletico Madrid - Sevilla game in theory. My position is that I would rather have a game available in SD on a small network than available on HD online only. Just my preference.