https://www.mlssoccer.com/season-pass/ It says "Subscriptions start on February 1, 2023". I assume that means that, whenever you sign up, your year runs through Jan 31, 2024. No clue as to what content will be available, but if I had to guess, I'd say the pre-season match between CLT and DCU on Feb 1st will be the "launch" match.
Taylor Twellman announced via Twitter that he was leaving ESPN. I'm assuming this means he will be joining the broadcast teams for Apple.
On the one hand...BOOOOOOOO... on the other at least its a sign we might start hearing about the "talent" Apple is hiring soon.
Either that or Turner Sports' national team coverage. That begins with a WNT match on Jan. 17, and four WNT/MNT matches this month, with so far no information or promotion about how that's going to work. US Soccer website has no broadcast information listed for any of those games.
82 NFL games in the top 100 most-watched TV shows of 2022That football emoji at #35 is the 4-10 Broncos losing to the 4-10 Rams by 37 points on xmas... which got more viewers than any NBA game, any MLB game, any World Cup Game, the Oscars, or any scripted TV show pic.twitter.com/goJraIxjvr— Lev Akabas (@LevAkabas) January 6, 2023 Three World Cup games but no NBA, NHL or MLB tells an interesting sort of story.
I wonder if he can get some sort of MLS/Fox combined deal, since it is assumed that the MLS/Apple venture will produce the FOX games. In this scenario, TnT could be involved with MLS, World Cup 26, Gold Cups, Concacaf Champions League and any other content Fox might have. It seems pretty obvious why he left ESPN, who now have basically none of the soccer properties in his wheelhouse and he would just languish with them for the next 4 years. I think he will probably end up doing MLS Streaming and maybe MLS on FOX as an extension of that contract, but most likely not any of the other FOX content as they already have a good roster of analysts/color guys.
Kentucky Derby at 88 is interesting. Horse Racing, like auto racing, has been undergoing a bit of a resurgence but I still didn't think anything would crack the top 100.
Hopefully whoever is in charge of the MLS whip around broadcasts happened to catch this FA Cup goals show, because they need to do the complete opposite of this. They aren't showing games, they just have guys talking in a studio and then just show a ten second clip when a team scores, its terrible to watch.
I had no interest in watching any games, but saw that option and opened it and was very disappointed.
So I noticed that Extratime is no longer on YouTube and as of right now it's only an audio podcast on Apple podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/extratime/id379077036?mt=2
Further interesting movement around the FAST streaming options. One of the shows that HBO Max had cancelled and then completely removed from the service, will be on Tubi starting 2/1. The show, which I literally didn't know existed until reading this, is called Generation. I'll never watch it as nothing about it seems interesting to me (except J. August Richards having a recurring role), I am interested in if this kind of thing could become a trend. There's no indication that it will get more seasons, but we're now seeing a FAST provider take a chance on a teen show from the HBO family and I assume we'll see more like this if it actually does well.
Streaming syndication. Yes, HBO said their shipping most of their cable speed to fast providers. Not sure if that's only streaming or if they'd sell to a traditional TV channel. Westworld is obviously the big fish from those options.
Kind of, but syndication typically required 100 episodes of a show and didn't require using a completely different service. This is a single season of 16 episodes and I think this is the first original streaming show to leave one provider to go to another (except for Cobra Kai which was a completely different situation), especially one of the FAST providers. It makes me wonder if there's a role for those FAST providers to play in sports broadcasting beyond whatever MLS was doing with Pluto.
Breaking news:@LukeWileman is the new TV voice of U.S. national team games on HBO Max and TNT.If you know of his work, you know he’s been around American soccer for a long time. If you don’t know of his work, you will soon.https://t.co/uCSaVPzwVK via @phillyinquirer pic.twitter.com/4V9Yb0wTTN— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) January 10, 2023
MLS has announced its first round of hires for games on Apple, and there are big names:@MaxBretosSports @JakeZivin @CangyManMSG @GOLAZODEPABLO (!!!)@FLord_TVA @Kyndrasports@MauriceEdu @LoriLindsey6@daniellevslaton @TaylorTwellman@marcelobalboa17(cont'd)— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) January 10, 2023
We'll, they certainly weren't going to have an entire roster of new people that would need to be introduced to the league. It was assumed all along that folks from previous national and local coverage would migrate over. I wonder how many people are still in consideration, surely they don't have anywhere near enough PbP folks, unless the analyst's and studio people are going to do both.
This is why I mostly reject Twitter as a news source. Please give names and not twitter handles. Drives me crazy when they do this for U.S. Open Cup scores. Yes, I'm old!
Here is the MLS release that includes some bio information: https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/appl...unveil-broadcasters-for-mls-season-pass-x1835 Analysts Kyndra de St. Aubin Maurice Edu Lori Lindsey Danielle Slaton Taylor Twellman Marcelo Balboa Sébastien Le Toux Sacha Kljestan Bradley Wright-Phillips Diego Valeri Hosts Liam McHugh Jillian Sakovits Tony Cherchi Play-by-Play Max Bretos Steve Cangialosi Jake Zivin Pablo Ramírez Frederic Lord