You seem to be making our case stronger. FBN had another live sporting event 7 months ago? At 7pm the next show was a documentary on planet Earth, which they quickly dumped the MLS match for. And given what they did to first 12 mins of that match, I'd say Don Garber has a right to be a little miffed.
What exactly is "our case"? What should Fox Sports have done in this case? It is obviously incorrect to call Sunday's scheduling a botch, as if Fox Sports had no idea this might happen and made a foolish mistake. They intentionally scheduled the Sunday FOX game lineup based on the high probability that the second World Cup game would not go to PKs and lead straight in to MLS pregame, just as happened on Saturday. If the game ended in AET, that's even better for Fox as WC coverage could end just in time for MLS kickoff. Garber was also quite aware that a PKs scenario might happen Saturday or Sunday. The fact that Sunday's random regular-season MLS game drew over a million viewers anyway should ease his pain. And from Fox's perspective, they're paying a whole lot more for the World Cup than for MLS, so they should run as much pregame/postgame WC coverage as possible to collect the advertising money. As mentioned before, FS2 (unfortunately for Fox) is not an option for spillover if they want broad availability of the MLS games, so FBN was it. They established this channel as a spillover precedent for both college football and basketball in the past year. If you can't use an EPG or the Internet to find FBN, not their problem. The beef you might have is whether FOX used a crawl on the telecast (in addition to the tweet) to tell MLS fans to switch to FBN or Fox Sports Go. They have been good about this in the past. I wasn't watching this Sunday so I can't help you there.
I think I already made the case above. Basically they shouldn't have truncated the MLS match coverage, especially at the beginning. They could EASILY have shaved 12 mins off their post-match coverage to catch the MLS kickoff. From what I recall, when Rob Stone stood in front of a screen that showed the MLS match in the 4th minute and him awkwardly saying that the first (and only) goal was just scored, there was already nothing else of import that they had to convey about the WC. And as I said in my original post, the only legit reason I could come up with for why they made that choice was because of strict advertising contracts (or I guess as you say the lure of bigger ad $'s). p.s. Had they made it really clear up front that they were going to switch to MLS twelve mins after KO, but that the MLS match was on FBN or FoxSports.com then I probably would've caught those lost 12 mins on one of those alternate places. But AFAIK they did not make this very clear at all. I kept thinking they were switching any second, but they didn't. At the very least, it was not as well communicated as is usual.
The fact that this was unusual for FOX leads me to believe that FIFA wouldn't allow the crawl (i.e. FIFA saying "MLS shouldn't be playing now*, we're not going to help them by letting FOX direct viewers to their game".). *I'm referring to playing through the World Cup, not playing in the summer in general.
For the remainder of the WC, I'm going to stick with BBC coverage, because FOX coverage just sucks. What is with all the shouting?! It's one thing for the main announcer to convey excitement during the game, but the FOX producers apparently are making Stu Holden and Aly Wagner -- the analysts -- shout and yell at the top of their lungs during their commentary. Is this a new form of broadcasting for the hearing-impaired? I'll take calm and appropriate BBC commentary, thanks.
Just starting to watch the ICC match between Arsenal & PSG, and it's remarkable who FOX is using it's third or fourth string in commentators, post World Cup. The PBP guy is named Mike Watts or something like that. He doesn't even have his own twitter account, seems cursorily knowledgeable about the game of soccer, e.g. he pronounced Wenger's first name as "Ar-SEEN". I guess I'll just turn the volume down. [emoji6] Edit: OOPS! Wrong network, wrong thread, my bad! Thanks @HomietheClown
A graphic on FS1 just spelled their own woman's name wrong. Her name is Katie Witham, but the graphic said Katie Whitham. Under each team name, there are three white lines that are supposed to show how many subs each club has left (ESPN does this with little circles). The last possible sub for each club just came on and all six white lines are still on the screen.
Disappointing that match pass hasn’t dropped its price even though no more CL/EL or FA Cup. Would have enjoyed access to overflow Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2, but price is ridiculous. Also, for reasons unknown, matchpass isn’t showing women’s u20 World Cup or Fox liga mx matches.
Maybe they are waiting for all auto renewals to go through in the next few weeks before they lower the price [emoji51]
I am sure their sales team will say that they did not raise the price when they got more content like Copa Libertadores.
...which they then sublicensed a portion of the matches, which they cannot show live on their service,
Right, I already get the Libertadores/Sudamericana games on Fanatiz (in addition to the ones that are shown on Fox Deportes), so the only value to me in match pass would be Bundesliga games not on Fox/FS1/FS2/Deportes/UDN and Bundesliga 2.
Even so, The point is that they are not going to change their price every time there is an addition or subtraction to programming.
Pretty much. And People who want onDemand replays of some FIFA tournaments and Gold Cups without a tv subscription.
And Australians (Australian Rules Football, which I remember they used to show in the very early ESPN days.)