The 2024 MLS TV thread

Abandoning local TV. Hilarious.

Yeah, local TV was just clambering to cover their MLS clubs in most markets.

 

Yeah it's quite amusing seeing people cry and bemoan the move a way from "local tv" when it is EXACTLY what they had before, and didn't fuggin watch.

 

I do wonder what the numbers were for local viewership and how that broke down between teams like FC Dallas that had an OTA broadcast (we even got all their games in Lubbock on the local MyTV channel) and others who had cable partners of varying degrees of visibility (DC famously had a year on FloSports and was often on NewsChannel 8 which few people had).

 

That's quite a broad brush stroke you made there.

NYRB fans for many years watched home and away games via MSG's coverage, and IMO it was superior on many levels to what we have now with ATV... which I also have to pay +$100/yr for.

Sadly, I don't think it's likely or possible for MLS/Apple to ever recreate the consistent, professional and tailored NYRB coverage that MSG used to provide. RIP.

 

Horrible production values. Announcers in some booth in Ohio for away matches, since there was no money for them to travel to away games. The "local" channel changing every couple of years from one oddball channel to another. Sometimes, MLS clubs had to actually pay to have the games on locally.

 

Exceptions exist ... the league as a whole? yeah, local tv wasn't where it was at. Remember when LAG singed that impressive local deal? Yeah, it was such a big deal because it was such an outlier. Clubs weren't getting much because the local outlets weren't offering much because ... not enough folks were watching to make it worth it.

MSG is a very targeted outlet. Their capability/catalog is much different than FoxSportsRockyMountain, for instance.

 

Or, more relevant, Altitude. Which I haven't watched in 4+ years because it hasn't been on the cable system that the Denver metro uses.

 

When LAFC was an exclusivity deal with YoutubeTV, it was 35/mo at first and up to 70 by the time we canceled. The only way to watch non-national broadcast games for the first 3 years. Only downside to dropping cable/streaming bundle is occasional national broadcast for international events or NCAA Basketball... glad most USA games are on paramount or max now.

 

I remember seeing right after the appleTV deal was announced that more than a handful of MLS teams had local tv ratings in the thousands.. Not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands... Just thousands.

 

MLS fans get defensive for Apple deal? Lol I think it's the other way around. WST and all the other anti-MLS accounts all they do is talk shit about the MLS Apple deal as if they were big fans of MLS before the deal.

These USL deals are good for them. I just hope they have better luck than MLS and people actually watch their games. That is where it will count. They complained for years, and still do, that the quality of MLS was subpar when compared to EPL. Imagine what they will say of USL when they finish watching a Manchester City vs Arsenal in the morning and then in the afternoon they watch a Phoenix Rising vs El Paso Locomotive.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that today the games are very spread out. You could sit your ass down at 2:00 and watch MLS all the way to midnight..which does sound tempting today.

 

I'm watching Season Pass on my Dad's TV in the UK and I'm seeing American ads.

 

I’m kind of pissed at the sports ticker showing all the other results on the Apple TV broadcasts this year.

worse. they talk about the results so you can’t just look away for a moment.

 

Apple is really, really bad at sports. The picture quality is fantastic. The money they've brought into the league is fantastic. Everything else is terrible, even the basic stuff like not spoiling other games.

 

What ticker? I don’t see it on my computer or app.

 

It’s popped up in every game today around 30 minutes. It’s just for a minute they show all the scores and ,worse, talk about them.

 

JFC, some of y'all just bitch about the dumbest things.... EVERY league does this!!!!!!! Do you all get pissed off when they show the results and/or highlights of the OTHER NFL games on Sunday?!?!?!?! How about the NBA??? College Football/Basketball???

 

I do. We all have scores and hilights at our fingertips if we want them. They respected no spoilers last year. AT&T sponsoring spoilers this year sucks.

they could do it in a way to allow you to avoid it if you’d like. I don’t need to hear Max and Brian take a break from kissing cherundrlos ass to tell me that Suarez scored a brace in opening 20 minutes of a game I intend to watch later.

 

I can watch every premier league game without the results being spoiled, just have to watch the NBC/USA games last.

Thx,

Jay!

 

Or we don't blindly defend Apple/Garber every time they push some garbage out and actually think critically

 

I'm not blindly defending anyone!!!! ESPN has a ticker at the bottom of the screen!!! NBC has a EPL score bug n the upper right corner of their games. Same for CBS Sports UEFA Coverage.

The Union had an out of town scoreboard during their local coverage, and would talk about the scores of opther games going on.

 

I don't have much of an opinion about this these days, but it wasn't THAT long ago that we had to wait 10-20 hours for some games to broadcast for the first time when watching the Premier League. I always appreciate that each individual Prem broadcast was conducted as if it was the only game happening at that time.

So i think you can forgive that some people who probably built up a whole system for watching a bunch of games with the historical non-spoiler handling that used to be pretty standard in these broadcasts.

 

I’m sure Apple will have the analytics of people who watched more than one game “on demand” Sunday or later last season. And if those same people will watch replays after watching a game where the scores has been spoiled this year.

My own viewing habits tended to be matchday only, but I would occasionally pop on a west coast game next day. No chance I watch Galaxy or Seattle (or whichever game I don’t double) if I see the scores during the DCU game tonight.

Thx,

Jay!

 

Thanks to the advertising part of it, I know to hit mute and use my arm to cover the bottom part of my visual field to avoid it.