First #USMNT match on Telemundo and TNT — #USAvCOL — under new rights deal averaged 540,000 and 416,000 (impressive 192,000 18-49) viewers, respectively. (Serbia friendly on Universo: 76K.) https://t.co/u744VNwqNt— Paul Kennedy (@pkedit) January 31, 2023
I was listening to this podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/65UzKXO7VmIWAAXUDmm4Qt?si=ZqO4FrCnTrKCdrUa0wGeuA And what it said was that basically people have found that soccer rights are very sticky. Essentially when you move soccer from free TV to requiring you to pay a subscription fee, most people will actually pay that fee. This isn’t the case for a lot of other things. Hence why soccer in the US has moved in this direction.
I have now answered one question I have had. It appears that matches broadcast on TBS/TNT are NOT available delayed on HBOmax. I thought they might as HBOmax and TNT and TBS are all part of the same broadcast group but they are not available. Oh well. I have switched from Sling to Hulu because Hulu has TBS and TNT while Sling does not. As an added benefit I get FS2 and FOX soccer plus included while I have to pay extra for them with Sling. Also, although I did not need it, Hulu has a decent bundle that includes HBOmax. That bundle also has Disney+ and the cost is less than Sling orange+blue which is the minimum needed to get good soccer coverage. Things in the streaming world are getting more, not less, complicated.
Apparently whatever issue that was keeping the TNT games from also being on HBO Max has been resolved. Just in:Remember the issue where soccer games on TNT couldn't be streamed on HBO Max at the same time?It's been fixed. Games on TNT will now also be on HBO Max, going forward.— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) February 2, 2023
Judging by the way this whole broadcast transition has happened I will only believe that when and if it happens. I also will think it is a good thing if TBS broadcasts are also included. I have not checked today but when I did check two days after the broadcast the last USA match that was carried on TBS was not available at all on HBO Max. While having the matches available is a good thing I do not, at least yet, see any advantages for the fan under this decision. I sometimes wonder if the people at USA Soccer actually have the interests of fans or the players or even the USA in mind when they make the God awful decisions they have. They allow poor coaches to run things and they allow 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) rate people to make choices of 3rd or 4th rate broadcasters. Again I have pretty much solved my issues and I will be able, with my current set up, to view all the matches I am interested in but I really think that USA Soccer's choices have very much short changed the entire fan base. Yes, what they have done seem to work OK, but it is way way down the list of quality choices that could have been made. The only thing I know for sure is that someone or several someones is becoming wealthy off this stupid move. I think the choice of broadcasters was made based solely on the money. The quality of the broadcasts and the wishes of fan was not considered at all. This broadcast deal seems set to move USA soccer backwards at least as much as the decision early on by the MLS to "change" the laws of soccer. Thankfully they have moved back to actually following, mostly, the laws of soccer but a LOT of damage was done early on and the MLS still suffers quite a bit from those early bad choices.
So the shift from HBO Max to Max seems to have not included soccer - no sports available on the new drop-down, no summer games scheduled, no info available from the customer service person I spoke to. Anyone know anything?
I said it at the outset of this deal that it would not be good. WBD/Turner totally botched Champions League coverage. Along with the NFL, Champions League is the one sports property you almost have to be intentional to screw up. Why US Soccer even considered them was boneheaded. But I guess they really wanted “Hard Knocks-USMNT”.
While I do not like the partial switch to HBO (Now called MAX) I do not see how the switch cause any "botching" of the Champion's League's coverage. I watched many matches this season from the Champion's League and not once was I unable to watch a match. I even recorded several that were on the "regular" TV channels included. But I also think that the Champions League was broadcast on the Paramount Networks this year and that may be what I remember. I do not think the HBO contract included any "Champions League" coverage at all. Maybe that is why I had no issues. It has become more complicated to find the matches I want to watch and that is a bit disconcerting but it just means that I have to spend a bit of extra time setting up recordings and, once that was done I just watch what comes along or my DVR setup except for the few matches I feel the need to watch live. Once again I wish that ESPN was covering all USA soccer and the MLS and the Premier League and the Champion's league and most other soccer. Not because they are "better," they are not. But because that would mean all needed soccer could be found in one place. I wanted to start watching the MLS a bit this year (I have been accused of anti-MLS bias) but they pulled something even worse and placed most of their matches behind an Apple pay wall and I try to keep all Apple products and software out of my home. So the only matches I get to watch are the very few that are not locked in the Apple vault. In fact I can watch more, a LOT more, of the Canadian Premier League than I can the MLS. (BTW: The Canadian Premier League is MUCH more horrible to watch than anything the MLS could produce) I rambled a bit in this but the bottom line is that USA Soccer's switch to the HBO (now MAX) family of channels was "inconvenient" but MLS's switch to hiding their matches behind Apple was truly horrible.
The Champions League previous US RV contract was with Turner Sports. They chose to end it early during the Pandemic, and CBS/Paramount took over the end of that contract and then subsequently won the rights for the current cycle. Also...ALL soccer is behind some form of a paywall.....whether you PAY for a cable subscription & an addition FEE for the sports package/bundle, PAY for a Paramount + Subscription, PAY for an ESPN+ subscription, etc...
It is NOT the fact that the MLS is behind a paywall, I don't mind that much, rather it is the fact that they force watchers to use Apple. Of all the conglomerates in the computing world I believe Apple is the worst. They make Microsoft look like the good guys.
I would guess that "Max" has simply misplaced it somewhere with the switch, as users have been noticing a bunch of technical issues with the switchover, including mentions of TV series losing random episodes. HBO Max and now "Max" have been obsessively slashing the TV show offerings on the service, and I noticed that my list of Films and Series to watch has grown smaller over the last week, but I'd be surprised to see that it applies to the US Soccer deal The next US match (Men or Women) that could potentially be on the service is a Women's match against Wales on July 9, since the Nations League finals will be on Paramount+, while the Gold Cup is on Fox.
How are they the worst? They're not a conglomerate either. Unlike Google and their other competitors they don't sell your private information to the highest bidder.
I would argue that broadcast TV isn't behind a paywall. Yes, kids, you *can* still watch TV with just an antenna.
There's only one game this summer covered by this TV deal, the WNT send-off match on July 9, and that one is scheduled for TNT. Everything else is a CONCACAF or FIFA tournament covered by contracts with other networks. So it could be that the one game isn't also streaming on MAX, or it could be that they just haven't added to the app this far in advance. The next possible MAX exclusive would be the MNT's friendlies in the September window, or whatever the WNT does after the World Cup.
This is going to confuse a HELL of a lot of people who aren't paying attention. "Why isn't the game on HBO/TNT? I thought they had US Soccer games." Prepare thyselves!
while not a bad idea at all for many folks there are two things that make it impractical for many/most USA citizens. 1. Many/most fans require announcers to tell them what is going on. That is pretty true even when the announcers spend most of their time vomiting crap that has nothing to do with the match and the switching of TV views make it hard or impossible to actually tell what is happening. 2. Most USA citizens are not at all fluent in Spanish and this is exacerbated by the fact that we also do not want to learn any second language. It is too hard and too much trouble for most USA citizens to bother. It is also made worse by the fact that for most broadcasts I have seen from Univision do not have either a secondary audio track or subtitles available in English. I do watch many matches on the "Spanish" Language channels but I understand a few other languages but I can count on my thumbs the number of people that live close to me that even understand a little Spanish. That does exclude a few people as I have 4 or 5 neighbors that were brought up bilingual but they all learned English as a second language. We, in the USA, are extremely anti-everything that requires something other than English to understand.