Human pinball is fun, and the Blast are the best team, so it's just TV entertainment, I'm no soccer purist, I never played until I was 28 years old and played GK in a rec league and then never watched on TV until my daughter began playing, when I was like 49 years old. so I don't care about "quality", never watch the EPL, just MLS and WC. So how the hell is it trolling? The last two years in Baltimore, we would get games on the WC Network, so we'd get at least half of the non-national games on that channel. So I have been watching a lot. Now I see that ESPN claims that this Sundays DC/NYFC game is on ESPN3, but my Comcast listings show other games, but not that one, I'll check later in the week, but maybe ESPN3 is blacked out locally? I wouldn't be able to watch that anyways, I'm going to the Blast game that afternoon. It's FUN ENTERTAINMENT, and pretty cheap, good for people not obsessed with "quality of play".
Yeah, ESPN3 isn't real - it's one of their streaming services, I guess similar to ESPN+ only you get ESPN3 free assuming you have a cable/satellite login that it will acknowledge that day) similar to NBCSportsnet or FoxGo.
Because I can watch ESPN3 and streaming services like ACC Extra through my Exfinity Cable box as part of my cable TV service.
Neat. That and their sponsorship of what I still call the Busch Series in NASCAR makes me hate them a little less
I have Comcast also and do use it to stream things but I have never seen them in the listings only occasionally advertised.
Do you have the X1 Platform cable box, with the voice control? You can just say ESPN3 and it brings up all the listings, same with YouTube, ACC Extra, anything.
I certainly understand the avalanche of "small" subscriptions. I now have FloFC, Mhz, Acorn and Spotify along with the extortionate Xfinity package I obtained so my wife would have high speed internet for her work.
That is not the case. If it was I would do it in a heartbeat. Unless I'm mistaken one would need the following combination of services to watch all DCU matches: - Fox Broadcast TV (one game, the only broadcast TV game this season) - A cable package with ESPN - A cable package with FSI - A cable package with UniMas (one game) - ESPN+ streaming subscription - FloSports streaming subscription Am I wrong? If I'm not, this is the most fan-unfriendly TV season I have ever heard of...in any major sport. Insane. By the way, this is the national televised match schedule that I saved from a DCU tweet or their site a few weeks back (all other matches are only on FloSports streaming): DCU vs. Atlanta United - Sun, Mar 3, 6pm ET, ESPN Orlando City vs. DCU - Sun, Mar 31, 6:30pm ET, FS1 DCU vs. Los Angeles FC - Sat, Apr 6, 3pm ET, Fox DCU vs. NY City FC - Sun, Apr 21, 4pm ET, ESPN Minnesota United vs. DCU - Sun, Apr 28, 1:30pm ET, FS1 DCU vs. Sporting KC - Sun, May 12, 7pm ET, FS1 DCU vs. NE Revolution - Fri, Jul 12, 7pm ET, ESPN FC Cincinnati vs. DCU - Thu, Jul 18, 8pm ET, ESPN Atlanta United vs. DCU - Sun, Jul 21, 4pm ET, ESPN DCU vs. Philadelphia Union - Sun, Aug 4, 7:30pm ET, FS1 DCU vs. LA Galaxy - Sun, Aug 11, 7:30pm ET, FS1 DCU vs. NY Red Bulls - Wed, Aug 21, 8pm ET, UniMas Portland Timbers vs. DCU - Sun, Sept 15, 7:30pm ET, FS1
You're right and, yes, it is completely insane. . I think your best bet is to get a VPN and purchase ESPN+. If you're willing to go on a social media blackout for 24 hours, mostly everything is either on ESPN+ or appears there 24 hours later. But, as you point out, you really have to work to be a DCU fan.
Didn't I read somewhere on this board that the FloSports games won't be archived on ESPN+? (Sorry for being lazy and not looking for that post.)
My post was a response to the OP who said they could only watch the national TV games. I just said if he had espn+ and out of market he’d be able to watch all the games. I wasn’t saying you inky need espn+
Thanks for the schedule anyways, those 13 games will be the ones I will get to see. Sucks that there is a 2 month gap between May and July with no games. Are there any short highlight versions of games posted on YouTube or anything? And I was really looking forward to this season, because they seem to have a lot of potential.
Perhaps this is because its an away match.. but I currently subscribe to ESPN+ and it shows this Sunday's match on ESPN+ If this is the case and I can watch on plus... then I have no need for Flo ever.
This was kind of my point up above, you can't buy everything. You just can't. The cable package you're talking about is a more expensive package, but not the top end. Its certainly not the base. ESPN+ is cheap enough, then toss in Flo. Forget that there are other things you might have to have depending on the people who consume TV in your home. I've already shelled out for NBC Sports Gold to get EPL games. I passed on the Turner Champions League package, which I think only includes the Europa League final. And Serie A used to get decent coverage on some channel in my cable package before it went on ESPN+ All that stuff used to be included in a decent cable package, which hasn't gotten any cheaper even if a lot of quality content has been removed.
This flosports deal will really impact the way I follow DC United and MLS... I have decided to not subscribe to flosports. I have already subscribed to ESPN+ which is a much better deal. I will wait the 48 hours between the game and it being on ESPN+. I will not be on BigSoccer or watching other matches until I see the United game (they tend to give away scores of other games). MLS, ESPN, Foxsports, unimas and Twitter will all lose out because they have allowed DC and other clubs to go this route. I'm sure I will end up watching less MLS. I will not be going to MLSSoccer.com or DCunited.com util I have seen the game... damn this is frustrating. The exception to this will be when United games are nationally broadcast.
Even that I consider expensive. I think it's like $22/month through Comcast. FOR ME anyways, that would be a lot just to see the DC games. IMO there are PLENTY of MLS games on TV every week as it is if I just want to watch any of the other teams, if I paid for Direct Kick, it would only be to watch DC, I don't sit and watch games every day and night.
This is not quite correct. It depends on where you live. If you live in the DC area (which the team apparently considers to be in VA north of Richmond, all of DC, all of MD, and all of DE), then you need: Access to FOX, ESPN, FS1, UniMas, and FloSports (you don't need ESPN+) And I say "access" instead of "a cable package" because cable is no longer the only solution to accessing those channels. For instance, a subscription to YouTube TV's streaming service will give you FOX, ESPN, and FS1. And Unimas is available as a stand-alone streaming service on a month-to-month basis. If you live outside the DC area, then you need: Access to FOX, ESPN, FS1, Unimas and ESPN+. With regard to this being the most fan unfriendly package, from a cost/flexibility perspective that's not necessarily true. Last year, when games were on News Channel 8, if you lived in the DC area, you were forced to have a CABLE package as that was the only way to access the channel. Now, with the games available on Flo, you are not tied to cable. You can have cable if you want or you can cut the cord and get whatever you want at a potentially cheaper cost. You have flexibility you didn't have a year ago... If you live outside DC, nothing has changed. That said, I understand that to watch the games this year you need to jump through some hoops you didn't have to a year ago. I'm not saying this FloSports deal was a good idea. Just pointing out that it's not quite clear cut that this is a terrible deal for fans - and yes, I recognize there are issues beyond cost/flexibility about marketing your product to casual fans. For me personally, offering the games as a standalone package has allowed me to permanently drop cable and Im saving significant money on my TV bill every month and still getting every channel my family wants...
I want to thank @QuietSide for that dispassionate analytical approach to how "inconvenient" this year's TV viewing of DC United games is compared to last. (I do remember the recent whingeing about the Sinclair deal that preceded Flo.) We are in the middle of another paradigm shift in watching televised sports (or just television actually). As for TV sports, I'm old enough to remember the only televised baseball games I could watch as a kid were the 9 road games the SF Giants played against the Dodgers. The NFL telecast of the 49ers was locally produced and only included road games. The Raiders in the early days of the AFL were awful and periodically on the AFL's national broadcast. Hockey and soccer? Fuhgeddiboutit. Now we still have over the air (mostly) broadcasts of NFL games, but with the ESPN and NFL Network that is changing and likely will go away sooner rather than later. Baseball really is a local broadcast issue and in DC it's on pay cable. Hockey here is the same, the playoffs are a mix of paid cable and over the air. Soccer, both MLS and others is a dog's breakfast of over the air, paid cable and streaming. If you want to consume televised sports today, you will have to pay for it through cable and also a streaming subscription or two. You can bemoan that fact, but it won't change. The main problem I see with DCU and MLS television in particular is that the coverage is so fragmented. Having three "national" broadcast deals (ESPN, Fox and Unimas) doesn't do the league any favors (the recent reports of declining viewership tend to support this.) Each week I have to check and see which broadcast "partner" is broadcasting what game and at what time. Makes it hard to do event viewing. Maybe in the future, MLS will have a single broadcast channel (or streaming service) until then, if you want to watch, you will have to scramble. I'll deal with it -- or we could go back to the old days of condensed games like "Soccer made in Germany" -- no thanks.
Between my son and I, I'd wager than half a dozen soccer games would be watched over the course of the week. Its a bit more him than me, but on a lazy, poor weather weekend, soccer could be on all day Saturday and Sunday. In addition to DCU, I am a West Ham fan so they were often a free stream on NBC Sports until they rolled out the Gold option which probably has more of their games than the free option. My son also follows Juventus and Dortmund closely enough to have a Pulisic and Ronaldo jersey, so having that coverage is of importance. We don't watch a lot of NFL in our house and I gave up Sunday Ticket over a decade ago. NBA and even NCAA aren't a thing for us. The Caps would probably be the only team that's typically available via our cable package that we watch from a sports standpoint.