Before you flame, think about it. Would it be so bad to have a TV timeout once or twice per half? The ball goes out of play often enough that the ref could call it, around the 22nd and 67th minutes or so, for a 3 minute suspension of play so they could have commercials. I'm not in favor of it, but I wouldn't mind it terribly if it helped ensure the profitability of MLS...
having no breaks is one of the things that i love about the game so much. mls will do fine the way it is now.
My stance on "doing things the way the rest of the world does it" is pretty well known around here. That said, there should be NO enforced commercial interruptions during play. At best, show a 10-second "supersitial" ad while a keeper is preparing for a goal kick or something like that. But please, no commercial breaks. Life has no commercial breaks, neither does soccer. Sachin
Tape delay. They could easily add a break for a commercial while the game continues, show a commercial then pick up the game exactly where it was left off. In reality the viewer would be 2 minutes behind the actual game, but there's always a lag now anyway. I wouldn't like it, but it's better than an actual stoppage in play.
I think viewers would be turned off by that, it just feels so unnatural. I think the current system works fine if people are watching the sport. It works in the rest of the world.
Does the MLS even own the rights to the air time? The NFL does not get the money from Super Bowl ads, the TV station showing it does. So I doubt there would be any revenue in this for the MLS.
Well, that should be reason enough to do the exact opposite. <-- I am never sarcastic when I say this Still, TV timeouts are not particularly a good idea in MLS (it should probably stay in college soccer because we're used to it). I think if the rationale is advertising dollars, the price of advertising on the signboards facing the camera should reflect the fact that it is being shown on television. Otherwise, MLS has to find a way to make the small amount of advertising airtime it has insanely valuable. That's probably the only viable way to ensure MLS of a decent television contract.
Never, never, never, never. Do like the Mexican/Spanish tv stations do: occasionally run ads across the bottom of the screen or have them popup at particular times. You can squeeze some extra ad revenue out that way.
Believe it or not, I didn't watch closely USA-Mexico at Azteca during WCQs - I was with family in San Diego at the time, but I caught glimpses of the game in between errands - but the Spanish feed had superimposed a programming advertisement of some sort in the audience, which was kinda cool. I would think that it would probably get annoying after awhile, but it's shown across the top third of the screen along with the scoreline and game clock, perhaps more valuable and a tad less conspicuous than a popup ad blocking the run of play along the bottom of the screen.
During CFL games on CBC, they'll have a feature called Canadian Tire Game Notes. Canadian Tire is like a combination of Walmart and Home Depot. Anyway, they run a brief commercial during the broadcast, not during a break, and on to the game notes. I don't know how many of these you could do during a match or if this is what Sachin is suggesting, but there's an idea. You could have the commentators read ads, a la radio. I don't think advertisers would jump at that, but I'm just throwing out ideas.
MLS would benefit even if they didn't get direct ad revenue because TV channels would start to pay MLS for the rights to show games rather than the other way around.
what do you mean by mls would make money instead of paying for TV time (#4 option in the poll). 1) Does mls pay espn/fox to show games? 2) Does mls generate any revenue from games on tv? Can someone explain the contract that sport league such as mls, nba and nfl sign to show games on tv.
It may feel unnatural to the half million or so loyal viewers that are actually watching now, but I'm pretty sure it would fell ok to any new fans. Hell, I've tried to get friends to watch soccer and they complain about lack of commercials. Yes, you heard me right. It turns out people like to know when no sporting action will happen so they can get drinks, snacks and go to the bathroom. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing 15 second spots (I assume that's the shortest commercial time ?) during corner kicks. Of course, for this thread to really take off, you'd need someone from the Business/Media forum to come in and start throwing numbers around. How much does MLS pay per ESPN2 game now ? Given current ratings, how much commercial time would have to be sold to break even ? I'd be all for commercials at corners if it meant more soccer games shown, or more games on EPSN instead of ESPN2. Time to stop taking a backseat to World Series Poker reruns dammit!
Run whatever you want on the bottom of the screen, but if a game that doesn't stop goes to a commercial (tape delayed or otherwise), my shoe goes through the television set. I watched the Women's WC final against China on ESPN Classic or something, and they kept breaking to interviews and commercials. It felt waaaay too long. Like Baseball. While we can say that the action never stops in Soccer, a lot of the time spent is building up momentum. If that's lost, the fun is sucked out of the game. Plus, I like the fact that I can watch a game in roughly 2 hours, as opposed to the 3-4 that some NFL games go.
MLS games on ABC/ESPN are basically infomercials. MLS pays for the airtime, and I think the ads you see during the opening, halftime, and end of the game help defray the cost of the airtime. But in the end, it is ABC that gets paid, not MLS. As for Fox Sports World, I think that the situation is somewhat different, but I don't know for sure. MLB, NFL, NBA, NCAA etc. are quite different than MLS, because they're more popular. There, the networks can make so much money selling ad space (the extreme example being the Super Bowl) that they pay big bucks to the league for the rights to air the games. Hopefully someday MLS will become popular enough that it can make money from TV. But for now, they have to pay for it. Having TV Timeouts would be bad, but it would be better than not having the games on TV, in my opinion.
If this door creaks open an inch, it will only be a matter of time before it swings wide open and we're watching crap.
Finally. An off-season thread that doesn't discuss something that has been discussed to death in each and every off-season since MLS' conception.
Yes, it would be so bad, and here's why. The majority of other sporting events take a tv time out because the game allows for a time out. Specifically the game has time outs. Soccer (a more pure sport) has no time outs, hence the tv ads would be cutting into the action of the game. Think about it. Boxing, American football, Baseball, basketball and probably others have there tv timeouts during a time out in the event. I think it would be much more appropriate to simply allow for all the ads to run at halftime (the only specific time out in soccer). I would look for other avenues for MLS to raise money. Besides before you can even comprehend additional tv ads you need to get more people watching the game.
They have time to take a dump, its at haltime. If you would even consider doing this why not go all the way and simply put time outs in Soccer! Then go to a commercial break about how I can save money on auto insurance, then come back & start play again. This, and only this, would be the type of sporting event that would fit tv timeouts. Unfortunately your now Americanized the game (in other words screwed it up).
People listen to this man. How many times have you watched a non-Soccer sporting event, ex. a basketball game that had 4 seconds left on the clock yet lasted 15 minutes & each team scored an additioanl 12 baskets? That's a bunch of crap.
How bad would a 2 minute water break be around the 20th and 65th minutes for those hot summer day games? We're not talking about giving each team 3 TOs per game. If MLS could get $5000 for each 30 sec spot (8 additional per game), that's an additional $1.2M in revenue (only counting the 30 ESPN2 games, FSW couldn't get near $5K per spot, ESPN2 may not either). Plus the players would be a little fresher. It wouldn't be my preference to see this, but I wouldn't go crazy if it did.