In the Scottish/Belgian thread, @HDSports reported (on 8/29) that they were watching ESPN FC and they announced that they would have Scottish League on air. They reported that it was at the 34:30 mark of the August 28 edition. So World Soccer Talk isn't the only source for this news.
Of course I just went to verify for myself and the 8/28 episode is the only episode in the past month that's not listed as available on demand. LOL.
Not sure if this is why or not but I can tell you that Sky is not airing any of this weekend’s Scot Prem this weekend despite there being a full round of fixtures. Their next live coverage is Sunday 9/20 for Hibs v Rangers. If espn is using sky’s feed and commentary that might explain why there is no sign of it being on espn anytime soon.
Good news for Bundesliga fans who have ESPN+: According to Derek Rae's twitter, all Bundesliga games, even the ones one linear channels, will be on live on ESPN+, so every single game can be streamed. Also, the international announcers will do every match. Derek Rae will call any games on the linear channels, but he also does international feed for the Bundesliga, as well. So for this Friday, the season opener will be on both ESPN and ESPN+. Not sure if the commentary will be different, but there you go.
i read when ESPN got the Bundesliga rights, it included Bundesliga 2 games as well, but I see none on the current schedule.
I don't know what the setup this year is, but in years past the world feed for Bundesliga 2 matches was simply a raw stadium feed, and when I say "raw" I mean no announcers, no graphics, nothing, which is what we got on Fox Sports Match Pass. If the Bundesliga isn't offering anything better than that this season, ESPN may simply be passing on it as I've never seen them offer anything like that (no announcers, graphics) on any of their streaming services.
ESPN has added ONE Bundesliga match to the schedule...it will be on Mon Sep 21 Bochum v St Pauli. Perhaps because they are limiting to a single match, they will have English commentary.
Guessing they're showing that one as they can pick up the BT Sport commentary & graphics as they usually carry the Monday Bundesliga 2 match in England on that channel.
So far ESPN has done a very good job of posting Bundesliga highlights on YouTube. Much better than FOX did last season. Hope they keep it up.
Watching EFL Cup match on ESPN+ right now. And their halftime coverage is bad. Non-existent actually. I'm guessing that the EFL feed would've had included halftime summary/highlights/etc (they used to anyway), but ESPN+ only showed 15 seconds of a stats page and that was it. I'm guessing this might be because ESPN is lacking humans in their production team to do a proper job during the HT break.
Seems to be the case. ESPN is adding graphics and commentary to their BL2 matches since it looks like they're getting a clean feed.
It’s cool Bundesliga 2 is on ESPN plus I wishSerie B was packaged with Serie A on ESPN plus. One league I would follow as much as Serie A
I just noticed that ESPN+ has some old Soccer Made in Germany shows from 1976-77 season. I used to watch this show on nascent cable TV starting in 77-78. So I just zipped through one which showcased Schalke vs Monchengladbach. Funny I thought I remembered it more of a review show with extended highlights of different matches, but that season's show seems to be just one match condensed to about 45'. The other things that surprised me were: absolutely minimal production, zero graphics on the screen, no score, no clock, no nothing. And in Gelsenkirchen there were "special" fans literally sitting on benches 2 feet behind the goal line, and walking around the touch line... hello?!! Anyway, listening to Toby Charles again was a bit of a trip. Maybe ESPN will put up later seasons?
Not sure why no clock on the screen was a surprise - it wouldn't be another 15-20 years before sports broadcasts featured these.
Don't think that's true. I recall English footy broadcasts from that era where they had this circular graphical clock icon which showed a quarter hour and then injury time. Can't recall them showing the score though. Also didn't other sport coverage from that period have graphics on the screen? (Olympics, basketball, etc) In any case, watching that minimally produced Bundesliga match was still a bit jarring.
Scottish Prem games - among others SPFL games - are now available on ESPN+. Looks like at least one match a week, plus some Championship and cup games. https://worldsoccertalk.com/2020/10/16/scottish-premiership-games-finally-added-to-espn/
For any old timers that first discovered football via Soccer Made in Germany, ESPN+ currently has a bunch of games from that show listed under the Bundesliga section. I'm looking forward to digging into some of these next week.
yup, we were discussing this above. Back when I first came across this, there were only a handful of games from '77(?). Wondering if they have/will upload more/later games? I also am curious if my memory about them becoming more of an extended highlights show is accurate. The '77 one I watched was one single match fit into 1hr.
Always focused on one match from what I recall. Watched that show from 77 to 87 or 88. But from 79 to 82 they drifted a bit and included more and more non-Bundesliga, especially World Cup qualifiers. But they returned to strictly Bundesliga after the 82 World Cup.
Was surprised to see ESPN didn't have any Coppa Italia matches this past week, there were some Serie A teams involved.