The FA Cup on ESPN(+)

Holy Crap! This has never been done before, I hope it's not just someone making the schedule at ESPN assuming they televise all the matches because they have the rights.

EDIT: Hate to throw cold water on this but my instincts may be right; the original press release from when ESPN announced the rights acquisition had the following headline: "79 matches per season to be streamed on ESPN+, including the Community Shield and FA Cup Final"

They'd almost hit that 79-match number on the third round alone, not to mention all the matches they've already televised from the first two rounds. Still hope I'm wrong, though.

 

Chelski get to play a famous team!

 

Why are there multiple games at 7:30 and 12:30 on Saturday and why are all Sunday's games at the same time? Is this something new this year?

 

According to the schedule page within WatchESPN and Wikipedia, this game will be at 11:30 A.M.

How many games did they have from the first two rounds? Including replays, the first two rounds had 78 games. I hope a few are on TV, especially considering Serie A has a break then.

Last season 22 out of 32 games were Saturday at 3:00 P.M. local, and this time it's 10 out of 32. All the big six clubs are playing at different times.

http://www.espn.com/watch/schedule/...6273a52b0259&startDate=20190106&type=upcoming and equivalent pages for other days have all of the FA Cup games listed, so it's not just the schedule within ESPN's soccer section that says that.

 

To paraphrase a famous line from Seinfeld, it's real and it's spectacular!

 

If only the FA Cup was still a respected competition...

 

I'll go out on a limb and predict that Arsenal-Man Utd ends up on tv. It's Friday 3pm. No reason not to do it.

 

After showing every game of the Third Round, ESPN Plus has only 2 of the 4 replays listed.

They're going back to having one time with a bunch of games and no other time with more than one. They have late starts of 2:45 P.M. on Saturday and 1:00 P.M. on Sunday. Does anybody know of another game from England that started after 11:30?

I might work while Manchester United plays. ESPN Plus lets you watch a game that's over without seeing the score.

 

Why would the FA want games to be on ESPN+ and not let any be on TV?

I was looking at the ESPN+ schedule from http://www.espn.com/watch/schedule/...6273a52b0259&startDate=20190115&type=upcoming and socceraction's blog also has only one of the Tuesday games listed. I hope they're all on, but either way one of ESPN's sites is listed wrong.

 

The two replays that I said weren't listed aren't available.

 

The tweet isn't useful without saying what games. It would be like a tweet saying there was another grand slam last night without saying which one of the up to 15 MLB games it was in. I'm not blaming you.

In the Referee forum people talked about only Premier League stadiums having VAR and if it's fair to use it some FA Cup but not others. In World Cup Qualifying, Japan should have been given a goal that the Saudi goalkeeper didn't get to until after it broke the plane of the goal line. That required goal line technology (GLT), not even VAR. The stadium in Japan had GLT, but they weren't allowed to use it because not every country in the group had a stadium with GLT.