Have started to hear that Dallas, Columbus, KC and San Jose will be scaling back their road coverage as well. KC wasn't very significant to begin with, should be interesting to see what that means.
Sounds like individual team purse strings are getting tighter, maybe the league needs to step in and do something. I think they should put games on the web the way they did the draft. For those with a broadband connection it was great. There would be a decent cost, but the league needs to make sure their product is out there.
Any limitations in terms of TV coverage is a step back for the league. Looks like the little bug we got here is starting to turn into a league-wide epidemic.
Then why would anyone subscribe to DirectKick at a higher price than last year if most teams are scaling back thier tv coverage? The league def. needs to get involved in this situation.
how will tis effect the Former MLS Shootout now known as Direct Kick? Maybe MLS is cutting out the free televised away games hoping more people will buy Direct Kick and that will be the only avenue to view those broadcasts?
If it were possible to state my sources, I would have already done so. All I can say is that this has come from two very trusted people who have long been involved in MLS broadcasting. I wouldn't post this if this were something I overheard in another forum or while shopping at Safeway...
Greenie, I wouldn't blame you if you did, soccer moms can be hot. So I'd understand if you got distracted or something.
If true, this needs league level visibility. I don't mean just the BigSoccer MLS forum, but more importantly fans of all teams who may not even get on BigSoccer. This would completely undermine MLSDirectKick or MLS Wrap.
not surprising this move. Especially if everyone broadcast their own home games. It makes more sense that way.
The Direct Kick broadcasts are just the feeds from the local telecasts. So if there are no local telecasts, it's 99.9% sure there will be no Direct Kick telecast.
No, the idea should be to "blackout" home games in the home market. OK, not blackout, that's too strong. How about tape delay? And if home games are sold out (dreaming???) broadcast them live. And to only televise away games by default. We need fans showing up for more and more home games. Broadcasting only the home games would kill the league even faster.
Wouldn;t it make more sense to televise the away games, and not the home games forcing people to actually attend the game? That's the strategy that the NFL uses right? I think a certain # of home tickets have to be sold in order for the home broadcast to be shown live.
Tickets have to be sold 72 hours prior to kickoff for NFL games to be shown locally. Not that it means a hell of a lot with the easy availability of NFL Sunday ticket. I do remember growing up as a kid seeing the Boston station buying 3000 or so tickets to gets 80s Pats games to a sellout, since they would more the recoup the $$$ from advertising. Can't say it applies to MLS other than you could easily see fans just opt for TV of home matches, and I don't know too many people who can afford to go to every road game, regardless of where they live in the US.
There is no numeric evidence that televising home games has ever affected attendance at MLS games. None.
Yes but he said the teams are considering cutting AWAY game coverage..not home game coverage... I would say the home games being on TV does effect attendance...especially games where the weather isn't perfect...there is a chance of thunderstorms tonight...a casual fan would say "I wont take any chances the game is on TV tonight" It's more comfortable to most people who are bigsoccer obsesed fans to stay at home drink a bar and stay warm and dry then go outside and maybe have to deal witht eh cold, wind or rain, or extreme heat. That's just common sense. Walk up crowds still mean everythign to the MLS with their season ticket bases being so low..televising home games cuts down on that walk up crowd.
"There is no numeric evidence that televising home games has ever affected attendance at MLS games. None." Are you saying studies have been done and have shown local TV has no affect on attendance or that you just haven't seen any? If the former, do you have a link?
My own pain-staking research. Basically, I isolated games by day of the week and time (like Saturday night games, Saturday afternoon games, Wednesday night games, and so on) and by team and ran the attendance averages for games that were on TV locally (on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, a local over-the-air station or a local cable station) vs. the ones that weren't. (In case you're wondering, I weeded out the July 4 games and didn't include them in the averages.) For almost every team, for almost every day of the week, there was not substatial difference in attendance between the home games that were on locally and the ones that weren't. And frankly, in the cases where there WAS a substantial difference, it was because of a very small sample data set. However, for the biggest data set (Saturday night games), the averages for televised and non-televised games were within 100-200 of one another. And it was never the case that the average for televised games were always 100-200 better that the average for non-televised games. It was about 50/50 on either side. In other words, the attendance is about the same whether the home game is on TV locally or not.
Other than the July 4th game last year that was on KWGN, only the national telecasts. And frankly, those national telecasts (on ESPN/ESPN2 and Univision and Telemundo) have been on at days and times where the Rapids wouldn't schedule the game except so that it could be on national TV. (In other words, they wouldn't put a game at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon if it weren't on ESPN2.)
The numbers don't really bear that out. TV coverage is pretty far down the list of why people do or do not go to MLS games. It is an extremely marginal factor that is easily dwarfed by other things, like day of the week, time of day, weather, the opponent, any special event (like a concert or doubleheader), and what the team is giving away at the gate. For example, you're going to get a massive attendance at a July 4 game whether they put it on TV in Denver or not. You're going to get a crappy attendance for a Wednesday afternoon game, whether it's on TV or not.