I can almost assure you that a) no it won't and b) ESPN will make more money on Streetball regardless because they will be able to sell more advertising per hour on Streetball than they could on CL Don't take this the wrong way, but until more people watch CL, ESPN doesn't really give a damn about your book. They are showing a CL match, just not at a time most soccer fans would prefer. Seems they're meeting their contractual obligation. Again, ESPN doesn't really care. Sorry. So at least you're used to the odd hours already.
3, I remember; maybe more. (They weren't all clinching, one, forget which, was the entire 9th inning of a game 3 or 4 when the series was tied. Y'know, important stuff that needed to be on 2 channels at once, in case someone could only get ESPN2........)
I clicked on the Champions League and it's going nowhere - appears to be looping. Hopefully because we're all so pleased with the coverage.
They are? Doesn't seem like it to me. Maybe you should complain to FIFA to be a wee bit more specific as to the contractual obligations in the future.
UEFA thinks we all watching the matches, just send a message to info@uefa.com UEFA Route de Genève 46 Case postale CH-1260 Nyon 2 Switzerland Telephone: ++41 22 994 44 44 Telefax: ++41 22 994 44 88 Media Desk: ++41 22 994 45 59 Web Site: uefa.com E-mail: info@uefa.com
Guys, you know I'm not a knee-jerk ESPN basher. But they dropped the ball here. No, we didn't know the exact field of eight teams until the weekend, but what were the odds that we'd have two East Coast games and one West Coast game today? Certainly enough of a chance that they were playing havoc with the afternoon planning of a few thousand people by saying they'd have a Champions League game. Ideally (assuming interest from FSW), it'd be nice to see the group phase with Fox Sports World picking up a direct feed from Sky. Then you could switch it over to ESPN2 for a bigger audience in the knockout rounds, well after the baseball playoffs. (On a tangent: I'd have to assume the reason they want ESPN and ESPN2 clear is so that they can show the 4 p.m. game even if the 1 p.m. game runs beyond its time slot, which it is indeed going to do.) (For the record: I don't believe I said it was a contractual obligation. I think, though, that it's good business sense and good manners to warn people when there's a strong chance that the live programming you're advertising won't be shown as scheduled.)
The baseball schedule for today is (times PDT): Twins at Yankees 10 am, ESPN Marlins at Giants, 1 pm, ESPN Cubs at Braves, 5 pm, FOX The CL game was moved out of its live slot because, if the first game goes long and overlaps with Marlins/Giants, ESPN is contractually obligated to show one of the games on ESPN2 for as long as the overlap endures. In the past, they have cut into the live CL broadcast with baseball. I remember a Man U game a few years ago when they missed two goals for this reason. ESPN did not know for sure that there would be two day games today until the times were fixed on Sunday. MLB had the option to schedule the Yankee game in the 1 pm PDT timeslot and the Giants game at 8 pm PDT. In this case there would have been no chance of an over lap at 1 pm and thus the CL game could have been shown without any threat of preemption. In fact, the Giants organization asked MLB to use this scheduling alternative, but MLB chose not to use this option because they did not want to force the folks in Miami to wait until 11 pm EDT to see their team.
http://www.kenn.com/sports/baseball/mlb/index.html Look at the bottom and you'll find that about 67 million people disagree with you. And destroy soccer? Then ESPN's doing a hell of a job of it since they show an MLS game every Saturday. Whether you like it or not, baseball and not the Champions League has ESPN's ear. It probably has something to do with little piddly things like money and ratings.
I just got this from ESPN Thank you for writing to ESPN. Please note that Tuesday's UEFA Championship League soccer game featuring Internazionale FC vs. FC Dynamo Kiev will now be aired at 1:00 a.m. ET Wednesday morning (Tues., 10:00 p.m. PT). Due to live coverage of the MLB Playoffs, there is a risk that viewers could miss action from the UEFA game, if it is aired at 2:30 p.m. In order to provide fans with complete coverage of today's soccer match, we moved it to 1 a.m. ET / 10 p.m. PT. Sincerely, ESPN Viewer Response Original Message Follows: ------------------------
Maybe. Maybe not. But I do know that they all give ESPN better opportunities for commercial breaks, thus better opportunities for ad revenue.
yes I don't think ESPN does these anymore, but the do get very good ratings Maybe Maybe, but I doubt it.
Or even be able to stand in the same room as Barry Bonds... (Jesus, did I just agree with Mike Segroves on something??)
Okay, so that's a nice, reasonable, and almost acceptable response. I mean, I'm actually impressed that they've set up a few things (like the special page linked from the comment section) to explain the situation. But still, why couldn't they have told us sooner so that we could have avoided this mess? I swear I checked before I left home this morning and it still said the game was on. Oh well, guess I'll have to tape it. Anger fading...fading...RISING...fading... Get that food to that church, Mike Segroves, God bless you! The "who cares about baseball" approach is hardly going to work...
I care about baseball. And football. And hockey. And rugby. And wrestling (the real kind, not that WWE crap). Oh, and soccer. I didn't get the memo that you were only allowed to care about a single sport.
I didn't think ESPN picked the best match to show but nevertheless I was going to watch.. I was pretty pissed when I saw streetball instead when CL was supposed to be on. ESPN just messed up again. There is no reason to replace live CL with streetball.
I agree that the timing was awful, but the NFL made a decision with less than a week to go to move a game back three hours (Ravens-Chiefs) to get better TV coverage. These baseball teams just found out a day or so ago when they would play. . Things change people. Why it would be nice for more notice, no one owes it to you, me or anyone else.
Yeah, I'll call Christine Brennan, Mark Bushman and Michael Lewis, and we'll get right on that. I know no TV.
http://www.dailytimesonline.com/news/stories/20030930/localnews/356060.html This stuff only happens to soccer fans.
the complaints of a few NFL fans don't really jive here. as if there was no other coverage of NFL on Sunday. sure there was. CL in the USA is a one-match every 2-3 weeks proposition, and the fact that it will be on at 1am is not the way to boost soccer ratings. sure ESPN might/could show more soccer at better hours (the Inter-Kyiv match could be shown at 9pm tonight on ESPN2 or ESPNClassic), but it's a catch 22 with soccer getting better ratings and more airtime. will either come first? espn (in the US) is not a soccer-friendly network, and it doesn't have to be. but it would be great if it were more than just soccer-tolerant. perhaps they'd show on ESPN2 a wednesday match instead of tape-delay broadcasting a tuesday afternoon match that was bumped because of an mlb contract.