People also need to remember that until this weekend, it was possible for teams to tie (esp. Cubs-Houston) and a playoff game would have been needed. That game would have pushed the playoffs back a day and would have allowed ESPN to show CL. When the playoff didn't happen, the games conflicted with CL. By the way, the first game did run into the second and ESPN2 is currently showing the second game. So the game would have been cut into. Would have been better if they let you know yesterday that the game wasn't going to be on, but beyond that, I'm not sure you have much of a complaint. Except for the fact that baseball is more popular than soccer.
on a BS board, i doubt baseball is more popular than soccer. so let the people's complaints be typed. espn does read their emails, and you can sign up to give more viewer feedback and input here: https://www.espnviewerzone.com/. i'm not too optimistic that ESPN Deportes will get cable/satellite distribution and really help the CL viewing concerns of the American audience.
I don't buy that. Many people only tune in for "their team." Moving that Ravens game affected lots of coverage because of the peculiar rules of the NFl deal. I heard a sports talk host in Baltimore bitching about it during an interview with an out-of-town coach because of what he could and couldn't watch when he was on a Ravens road trip. The point of posting that was that when these things happen, a certain subset of fans drags their crosses loathing how soccer is treated. Well, here's evidence that it's not just soccer. My point - stop taking it personally. That's not ESPN's job. This is not a new product. It has been around for a while. How much longer do you expect broadcasters to wait for this large viewing audience to catch on. Face reality - the market is small for this program. And when you have a smaller market, you don't always get spoon-fed. WC (every game) WWC (some games are bumping college football) MLS almost every week of the season MNT WNT Yeah, they're not soccer friendly. It's probably not that easy technical-wise with satellite transmissions, etc. Just a guess.
I agree ESPN does show soccer, the game is on late tonight. But the fact that ESPN shows every game of the WC and some WWC and weekly MLS games, is because SUM owned the rights and gives them a sweet deal. It will be interesting to see what happens after 2006. ESPN can't make huge (or any) profits off of most soccer, but they could still treat the sport better than they do. Put a little effort into building and expanding the audience (like they've done for Bowling, Rodeo, Xtreme sports, and many other/bigger sports like hockey and NASCAR), and you'd have more soccer fans and viewers of soccer. I'm not that upset with ESPN and their soccer coverage, I just wish it were improved here in the US.
Is it in ESPN's best interest to have viewers of programs/games it is contractually obligated to show? It isn't their job to increase ratings for CL? Please explain. I would figure that a network planning to launch ESPN Deportes would want as big an audience for soccer as possible. But perhaps the days of soccer on English language ESPN are numbered come the new year.
So what's the problem? "Soccer," as we'll call the group of entities whose goal is to get as much television on soccer as possible, does not negotiate from a position of strength. I didn't realize ESPN was a charity. With the exception of hockey, I can almost guarantee you that ESPN makes more in ad revenue on any of the sports you mentioned than they did on soccer. And I don't really expect hockey to be on ESPN after this season anyway. So you wish somebody else picked up the slack? Any suggestions? If you say Fox, I'll slap you in the head.
Not really. If ESPN's programming consisted solely of CL, then yes. But given the choice between soccer, baseball and an EOE product financed by sponsors, then the choice becomes obvious - move soccer. CL's audience is of little importance as long as ESPN's bottom line is met one way or the other.
Yep, but they aren't miracle workers. Nope, it's yours. ESPN can't make anybody watch their programming. Just ask Gary Bettman. That's up to the fans, thus it is the fans' job to increase ratings, thereby showing ESPN (or Fill-in-the-Blank Network) that they can guarantee a certain revenue stream by showing certain programming. At this, soccer fans are an abysmal failure to this point. Let me put it this way. I'm a huge soccer fan. I watch every game I can get in front of. But if I were in charge of ESPN programming, I wouldn't show soccer nearly as much as they do. The audience for ESPN Deportes is not the same as the audience for ESPN For Champions League, almost certainly.
Oh, surely you remember that fierce bidding war for broadcast rights between Fox, ABC and NBC. Oh wait, that was just a dream I had the other night. I lived on an island and Heidi Klum was peeling potatoes on the porch. Best dream ever.
No, I wish ESPN would pick up their own slack. But, as you've said, they're not a charity, they are a sports broadcaster, so it is expecting too much of them to do a bit of a better job with soccer coverage and offerings here in the US. What's stopping ESPN2 from showing a Wednesday CL game on 10/1 when their 9/30 game is bumped? Certainly not their MLB contract. It makes more economic sense for them to throw on a tape-delay in the middle of the night. I know. Could ESPN improve their basketball, football, baseball coverage too? Maybe, maybe not; but it's just easy to notice that their soccer coverage probably needs the most help.
I dreamt I was being chased around the kitchen table by a wolf, while simultaneously being unable to remove peanut butter from the roof of my mouth. I like your dream better.
ESPN shows way more soccer than their cost/benefit analysis would dictate. They're doing their part. CL MLS MNT WNT WC WWC They used to show 2 CL a week, nobody watched. They used to have La Liga, nobody watched. They used to have English soccer (waay back), nobody watched. Sensing a pattern? They used to. They make more money replaying World's Strongest Man during the time slot. It's a business. Deal. Probably their Director of Programming's employment contract. So what's the problem? They're having a similar conversation right now on biglacrosse.com, bigwaterpolo.com, bigcollegewrestling.com etc. Don't come crying to me when others break out the cross references. Your on the edge here.
It pains me to read this for someone calling themselves a huge soccer fan. I'm not an economics wiz, but I don't think limiting the supply of televised soccer in the US will increase the demand for it. In the long run maybe it will or maybe it won't. But in the mean time, I'd rather be able to watch the tape of today's CL game right when I get home, as opposed to waiting until 1am tonight.
ESPN "The world wide leader in sports television" slogan is a lie, If it was just the U S it may be true. Soccer is the biggest sport in the world,and if ESPN does a shoddy information job on the worlds biggest sport it is anything but a leader.
Since I'm nobody, I guess this is true. The fact is that some people do watch, and the ratings gathering technology can not accurately represent the very small numbers that soccer achieves, even on a cable network devoted to sports. But I can't understand your statement that a very successful sports broadcaster would go against their cost/benefit analysis and show more soccer than is useful in a business sense. Where are you getting this info from? It sounds to me that, in your opinion, ESPN is doing more than their part for soccer. And I cannot agree with you on that.
That whooshing sound you heard was my point flying over your head. Here it is in different wording: The world of television, even (or especially) televised sports, is a harsh, unforgiving world. They don't care about you. At all. They care about the advertisers, who don't care about you either. The advertisers care about your money, and how best to get it from you. They've determined that the best way to do this is to advertise on (among other places) television, and they've further decided that it's in their best interest to advertise primarily on programs that the most people watch, therefore getting the most "bang for their buck." Heck, if their primary goal is to get your money, they'd like to spend as little of their own money in the process. Now, back to the TV executive (the one who doesn't care about you. At all). He (or she) has a decision to make. A decision that will largely determine how much money his (or her) channel makes and therefore whether he (or she) gets to keep his (or her) job. That decision is what programming to put on the air that will draw the most viewers and therefore the most ad revenue. Can you see how there isn't a whole lot of room for sentimentality there? By the way, I spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars every year to get the soccer I want to watch. I'm not either, but I do know that this falls squarely on the side of the ledger marked "Not ESPN's problem." Two guesses whose problem it is. Life is full of disappointments, I know. Listen, I'm not trying to be a jerk here (really, I'm not). It's just that so often people get sentimental about TV (remember how sad you were when they cancelled Felicity or The Agency or whatever show it was?) when there's no room for it. Whenever you question the motives of a television executive, just remember this - they don't care about you. At all.
Again, without trying to sound like a jerk, you are wrong. If there were a better known way to sample viewing habits, the advertisers would have adopted it by now. Good catch. I left out the X factor vis a vis soccer - a lot of very rich people (without giving any names, one of them rhymes with Band Chutes) have basically paid off ESPN to get their product on the air. This naturally skews the cost/benefit analysis (but also goes a long way towards explaining why you don't see ESPN pimping soccer-related programming during non-soccer programming - they don't have a dog in this fight). Years of ratings data, news from MLS, etc. Let me put it this way - if the very rich people mentioned above didn't do their part, you'd be watching a lot of soccer in Spanish. ESPN is their tool. Fair enough.
okay, so they changed their programming.. not the end of the world.. but explain this to me... HOW DOES THE BIGGEST, MOST POWERFUL FREAKIN COUNTRY NOT HAVE A NETWORK THAT SHOWS CHAMPIONS LEAGUE MATCHES (all of them)? that confuses me as their is a channel that shows only a fishtank, that i guess you just stare at... it makes no sense if i have access to over 1000 channels, yet not one shows major football action from around the globe.. just when i thought, in this day and age of technology, that the world was coming together with easier access (internet, ect).. we are really just as far apart in some aspects... sorry im so all over the place.. just seems to be extremely confusing to someone who lives in both britain and the USA... phishy
Two VERY DIFFERENT ARGUMENTS here (sorry to shout, but this is a noisy thread): 1. ESPN can't be blamed for giving soccer the short end of the stick because it's simply not as popular as other programming. 2. ESPN can't be blamed for listing a live Champions League telecast that was quite likely to be bumped. I've gone along with (1) on many occasions; I know the reality quite well. But I can't go along with (2). And I agree that it's a pathetic situation that in the zillion-channel world, we don't have a single outlet for live Champions League soccer this week.
My guess is that it's cheaper to get the rights to show a fishtank than it is for the Champion's League.
Only way to be able to show all three games at different times. ESPN would rather not set it up where they have to compete against ESPN2 for viewers, simply to accomodate a low rated broadcast. And the schedules couldn't be set until the league and network knew what teams would be playing and where at and who they'd be playing. With two games eventually winding up on the east coast and two winding up on the west coast, they wanted to arrange the schedules to maximize ratings and attendance.