You can watch as many games on Sunday as you wish with the MLS TV package. Being adroit with the mute button allows you to skip updates about other games. Thx, Jay!
Nope. I tried watching the Hell is Real derby on Sunday without knowing the score but it was right there on the home page, then again where you click to watch.
If you're on the website (which it looks like you are), it's here but it looks like it's browser and not account specific:
Oh, that's awesome. Tell me how I comment on X as I'm watching as I love to interact with fans there much like here when there is a live game feed?
And the number of MLS Apple subscribers willing to watch yesterday's games "as live" are probably all posting in this thread.
I just don't understand those folks who subscribe to Apple MLS Season Pass who care if games might have a Friday or Sunday schedule. If you're a season ticket member and get MLS Season Pass you might want to watch a live game on a day when your team isn't playing. Fifteen games a week would make plenty of inventory for twelve games on Saturday. It wasn't that long ago when MLS didn't even have twelve games a week to offer.
I don't. I want to watch my team. If I happen to catch a late game afterwards, cool. If not, I'm not losing sleep over it. I realize I may be in the minority on this. The major complaints about the Apple deal seem to be: 1.) It's Apple 2.) the announcers suck and sound as if they have never called MLS games before! 3.) Games aren't on local TV stations Those are the three biggest complaints, at least from a Philly Union Twitter/Philly Soccer Page comments. Now, going by the second it's quite obvious that people were NOT watching out of market games on ESPN+. If they had been, they'd know that the majority of the announcing crews have been calling MLS games for quite some time. I understand the lack of your team's games being on a local TV channel. It'll be interesting to see how San Diego does building their fanbase out, though it hasn't seemed to hurt St Louis. I use those two teams as they are the only teams currently in the league to never have a local TV deal.
I'm past all that and only looking forward with MLS. I watched the game on Sunday then switched over to the NFL game after it was over as it made for a good night. Watching replays isn't the same as a live games. When you have a captive audience, that's who you should cater to grow the base.
From my POV the problem isn't that they've "never done games before", its that many of them haven't done the necessary research to call the teams they're calling. This stands out particularly when you get an announcer calling a team they haven't done much against a team they used to do regularly pre-Apple.
It's no different then when they were the "home team" local announcers. They knew a ton about the local team, and hardly anything about the non-local team. I agree, the announcers need to do their homework, and put more into learning the teams. It's not that much to ask either. We see plenty of announcers and pbp guys and gals do this for multiple teams and sports on the same weekend already! I have to watch Wednesday night's and Sunday's Union games on tape delay/replay due to work commitments. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to watch a game live.
The difference is when they were working for the home team there was an away team broadcast as well, so you could choose your poison (or if you were a fan of one of the teams you could choose your team's broadcast). Now that there's only one broadcast the expectation should be a more even-handed/neutral broadcast. An expectation many of them are failing to meet.
Why Do you think I want Sunday and latenight friday games? I also just want to see other teams besides the Union.
So why do ESPN bother showing Monday Night Football live when they could just show a Sunday afternoon game "as live"?
My bad, I wasn’t really thinking that through as I wrote it. Too used to other sports where you could do that. Huh? Did you quote the wrong thing?
The night before a game the announcers for an NFL game meet up with the coaches and a few of the players of each team to go over strategy and what the teams might do during the game; so the announcers are fully prepped for the game ahead. I don't know if this is possible with MLS, but I think it would help enormously.
It's cute to think that coaches in MLS have "strategy" and have a clue "what the teams might do during the game."
Soccer is more complex. It isn’t a set of plays from a book. Most teams have a style that is obvious. It is an apples to concrete comparison.
I'd be happy to be able to watch my team with home announcers. It's so weird watching the team I'm passionate about while the announcers keep saying things like "the NYCFC left back" or "the NYCFC player" or simply mix up the players because they simply can't remember the players names. It's much worse on Season pass than it was with ESPN and Fox games in the past. They seemed much better prepared and the season pass people I'm certain fly to the stadium and read a one page press sheet before the match as their entire prep. It's so bad. Add that to the fact that they use like 2.5 cameras now, have an intern in the control room that can never seem to show a proper replay of any key plays during the match. Yes, I'm frustrated. The season pass broadcasts themselves absolutely suck. I love the single home, no blackout thing very much, but I've been watching less and less this year a d probably won't (I know I will last minute) renew for next year.
I both love season pass for its convenience and agree with almost everything you said. But the question is: is it better or worse than what you had when games were on RSNs. For the Galaxy, I'd say it's about the same quality, maybe a tad worse. I have read, in this very forum, that it's a huge improvement for some. What its definitely worse for is when they have exclusive access to things like the Rose Bowl game, or the ASG. ESPN and Fox did a much better job giving games that big event feel, be it with blimps, drones, crazy camera angles etc