It goes without saying that broadcast companies are only in it for the bottom line. I dare to say that no network would broadcast at a loss to please "the fans." With that said, it's pretty piss-poor that we can't get a major tournament like the Gold Cup - where the games are being played in the U-S-A - brodcast to a wider US/English speaking audience. What we need are sponsors for the US MNT who will step forward and put some pressure on networks to get with the program. Helloooo Nike....
Univision could still show some consideration to the English-speaking fans who are conned into watching their national team on a Spanish station. Why can't they arrange for English commentary in SAP? I don't think the rights for all languages should be sold unless Univision accounts for the demand for languages other than espanol. I wonder what percentage of the audience for US Gold Cup games speaks Spanish as their primary language.
Wow. You're new here aren't you? EDIT : No you're not, I thought you'd know better. for the record (and this should be stickied) Jack Warner is out for himself and only himself. If CONCACAF completely imploded after he has made all of his money, he wouldn't care. He views CONCACAF in the same way your average African military strongman views his country : A venue for unrestricted plunder and self-aggrandizement edit : so if I understand george correctly, this whole issue was decided back in the mid 90s and is only back up for re-selling after 2007? IOW, everyone's hands is tied until then re : the gold cup?
However hasn't FIFA delegated jurisdiction and control over ALL international games in the US to USsoccer?? In other words,if you don't get Ussoccer's permission,you don't play. Therefore USsoccer could, if they wanted, say to Warner & Co, if you don't sell the English rights to a company people can actually see, you can see how much $$ you can make playing the Gold Cup in Trinidad and Guyana..... This is no different,just less direct, from the control exercised by the El Salvador Soccer Fed.,IIRC, for example, in not selling their TV rights to other than closed circuit.
Some replies to various questions raised by my post on the TV rights: For Chayes regarding the increase in TeleFutura ratings: The overall ratings for Hispanic TV are not huge (certainly not in comparison to general market ratings, and excepting certain very large Hispanic markets like Southern California). Therefore, an increase of one-tenth of a point may not sound like much, but from Univision's perspective (when they're trying to build TeleFutura into a credible competitor to Telemundo) every little bit helps. To them, looking at it from the long term perspective, the gain they might get from selling the English rights (a payment from FSC) isn't enough to offset the potential loss in the ratings. It doesn't seem like much, but when comparing TeleFutura to Telemundo a tenth of a point could be meaningful. For NBlue regarding CONCACAF's long-term best interests: I agree with you, it would certainly make sense to try to find a way to get the Gold Cup onto English TV. But remember we're talking about Jack Warner and CONCACAF, who have demonstrated time and time again that they're only out for themselves and only think about the short term. The classic comment to me was Jack Warner's, after he attended the opening of the Home Depot Center - "While it's nice, it should be made available to the entire Confederation for events at no charge". Thanks Jack - when did you contribute to the cost of building the stadium! In the end, long term planning and CONCACAF are a contradiction in terms - that's why I was so pleased to learn that SUM at least had the rights to operate the venues this time around. Maybe soon they'll have the TV rights too. To roadkit regarding getting US Soccer sponsors to "ante up" by putting pressure on the networks to get the games on English TV: Overall, unless a huge amount of pressure is applied (read many many bucks), Univision will not respond - as indicated they need these games to help TeleFutura. Finally to davemark44 regarding English SAP: You would think this makes sense and early in the life of MLS we asked Phil Schoen on the old NA Soccer mailing list how hard this would be (i.e. English SAP on the original Univision MLS telecasts). Technically it's not hard, but the question is whether or not you want to do it strategically. In the late 1980's (after the demise of the NASL), as I was first becoming a soccer fan (due to my kids playing the game), I starting watching soccer on the predecessor network to Univision. It was called SIN (Spanish International Network I believe), and the play by play was done by Tony Tirado. About once every 10 minutes he would switch into English to explain what the game was about, to give the score and to quickly summarize what had been going on (it usually lasted less than a minute). He did this for about a year, then he stopped. At the time I was working for an ad agency in New York (I'm still in the media/advertising business), and a sales representative from SIN called on me (I was working on an account that utilized Hispanic media). I asked the representative why they had stopped using the occassional English commentary and he responded that their CEO had just read "In Search of Excellence", which was a well-known management book and very popular at the time. One of the tenents in "In Search of Excellence" was Stick to Your Knitting, which this CEO interpreted to mean serve the Spanish language audience, don't worry about the limited number of English speakers. Therefore, they had decided not to be concerned about the few English speaking soccer fans. From everything I know, nothing at Univision has changed since then, which is why they don't care to implement English SAP. The only thing they care about is to make sure that TeleFutura gets the highest ratings possible with the least expense to get it. George
Some additional responses: To Lloyd Heibrunn's question about US Soccer's "approval rights" for all games played in the U.S.: I'm really not sure what the relationship here is because technically US Soccer is part of the the confederation that is CONCACAF. So can you demand a payment of an entity that you're part of? (I don't know the answer here). Clearly US Soccer must grant approval when club matches are played (their fee is one of the reasons why Champions World went belly-up), but I don't know if that applies to Confederation matches. I think this may be different from the TV rights to WC Qualifiers, but we're really moving beyond my knowledge (probably Oliver Tse would know!). To Thomas A Fina and others regarding the length of time of Univision's agreement with Inter-Forever: I don't know for certain that the contract runs through 2007, I just remember that when it was announced they said it ran through the middle of the first decade of the new century. Given that CONCACAF has re-scheduled the timing of the Gold Cup (from early in the winter to mid-summer), it's possible that this may be the last tournament covered by the original agreement - I really don't know (that's why I put a question mark in my original post regarding the end date). Therefore, we shouldn't use my date of 2007 as gospel, but clearly the 2005 tournament in covered by the agreement (again Oliver Tse probably knows when the agreement ends). George
Philips would have more leverage than the Nike-sters. Nike is leaving MLS, is likely to drop Manchester United after having its Italy contract cut out by the Kappa people, and Mia Hamm has retired.
Telefutura is an over-the-air channel. Use big-ass rabbit ears if you need to. Territory can be such a biznitch. I mean, the way that Baltimore and Washington split up everything, it's hard to figure out which local stations you're supposed to get if you're living in, say, Howard County.
There used to be, I think, only 14 Telefutura stations. Now, there are a ton: http://www.univision.net/corp/en/mp_list2.jsp
so channel 28 is telefutura in philadelphia!! I'll have to pull out the old rabbit ears...it's not on any cable system!!
if the local Telefutura signal is strong enough to reach a good percentage of the designated market area, then the cable and dbs systems must carry the local channel. so the irony is that those who can't simply turn on their cable or dbs and have a local Telefutura channel most likely aren't going to get a clear Telefutura signal via rabbit ears. but since Telefutura has a growing number of local stations, the 2005 Gold Cup will be broadcast over the air in several markets, and viewers without cable or satelite, yet in the DMA with a strong Telefutura signal, will be able to enjoy the Gold Cup games on free tv but only en espanol. i've been able to catch Confederations Cup matches in the middle of the day on ch14 in Northern Virginia without even extending the rabbit ears, and i look forward to doing the same thing for the Gold Cup. Sucks for others who live in less diverse areas of the country that are without broadcast Telefutura signals.
Let me add my thanks to geohiller for the excellent explanation of the relationships between the governing bodies, marketing entities and broadcast companies. I actually think I understand it now. I don't like it, but I understand it.
"WFPA-CA" I don't know what the "ca" at the end of the station means, though. Perhaps they mean it as a cable-only enterprise?
"LP" means "low power" "CA" means "Class A" http://www.h-e.com/s1948.html "CA" seems to be a subcategory of "Low Power"
I never thought Atlanta was one of the "less diverse" areas of the country. Oh well. Does anyone know if there's going to be an english radio feed on the internet?
Doesn't look good for 2007 either. According to Univision's website article Totos los partidos en vivo "Univision también compró los derechos de televisión para la edición 2007." For the non-spanish speakers they are saying "Univision also bought the television rights for the 2007 tournament" Damn if that just doesn't suck eggs . When they aren't playing the US I root for Mexico in these tournaments but I'm hoping against hope that they go down hard this time so there are less viewers for Univision. George, like others I just want to say thanks for all your research on this topic. It makes me mad but at least I know who I should, and shouldn't, be mad at.
GoodForUS, thanks for spotting that article on the Univision website. Now we know we're going to have the same problems next time One point of clarification regarding the FIFA Confederations Cup and the FIFA World Youth Championships: In my original post I said that the English rights were bought by Fox Soccer Channel directly from FIFA. That is apparently incorrect - the entity that bought the English rights to those two tournaments is actually SUM (Soccer United Marketing). SUM, in turn, arranged for the broadcasts on FSC. I'm not sure what the financial arrangements between FSC and SUM are for these broadcasts. George
Big ups to the SLC, coz we get it here locally. Now if we could just get some fargin' defense 'round here!
Remember Euro 84? The tournament in France that SIN had the exclusive American rights. SIN was still trying to serve the English audience a little bit. They have another guy in the Studio: Jorge Berry, who spoke better English than Tony Tirado. Jorge would make some comments in English intermittenly during the game. And during intermission/post-game, he would also chat with Tony in English occasionally. I strongly remember they talk about the "clock" style in soccer and American sports, IN ENGLISH. The soccer clock starts with "0:00" and counts up to "45:00", while in American sports, the clock starts with the total time of the half/period and counts down to 0:00. Of course, Jorge Berry was a temporary experiment. There is no point using an occasional English commentator in a Spanish telecasts. If a non-Spanish speaker watched SIN, he didn't expect to hear English commentary, i.e. the lack of English commentary would not turn him off in the first place. So why waste the money? Afterall, non-Spanish audience are piggy-backers, i.e. leeches, anyway, because the commercials are NOT targeted to them. If 20 million viewers watch your program but they have no clues about your ads, what good is it?