ESPN to Bid For Premier League Rights in the United States

1-liner, Media Gossip/Musings, Soccer tyduffy February 6th. 2009, 3:15pm

ESPN Not Finished With Premier League: ESPN and Irish network Setanta are teaming to buy the Premier League rights from Fox Soccer Channel in the U.S. They may collude for the two minor U.K. packages as well. (EPL Talk)

14 Responses to “ESPN to Bid For Premier League Rights in the United States”

1
sponge-worthy Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 3:26 PM
i’d watch. Go Blue.
2
jpq1999 Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 3:26 PM
“Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?”
/crickets chirping
3
clown Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 3:29 PM
As long as they only show a game with at least one team from the top half of the table. No Stoke v Porty bullshit.
4
thecassino Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 3:32 PM
I don’t understand why they’re pursing this. Do they really think it’s going to be substantially more successful than their Thursday Night Soccer debacle?
5
clown Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 3:42 PM
Do they really think it’s going to be substantially more successful than their Thursday Night Soccer debacle?
That’s like comparing Monday night Arena League ratings to Monday Night Football ratings. Two different animals.
6
molemaninthemorning Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 3:54 PM
They may collude for the two minor U.K. packages as well.
I know you probably wrote this last night and submitted it to TBL ty, but that ain’t happening.
The satellite broadcaster won the rights to five of the six packages of 23 games available as bidding reached a combined Â£1.8billion, 5 per cent more than was raised the last time rights went out to tender three years ago.
Setanta Sports, the Irish-owned channel that broke Sky’s monopoly on live football three years ago, faces a battle to retain subscribers after it lost one of its two packages, leaving it only with the rights to show matches early on a Saturday evening.
Sky is taking over everything. I find it incredibly hard to believe that their sister station will lose anything here.
7
molemaninthemorning Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 3:57 PM
And from UPF, the best soccer blog around:
This also means that FSC is in the driver’s seat to continue to broadcast games in the U.S. because they can easily share broadcast teams with Sky. There was some discussion in the comments on the last post about whether networks or the league provide the broadcasters — at least according to that bastion of knowledge Wikipedia, it’s the networks. So, as I suspected, this makes it quite cost-prohibitive for ESPN to broadcast games in the U.S. that are shown by Sky in the U.K. because they would be required to provide redundant broadcast teams. Fox Soccer, on the other hand, would only need to share a satellite feed.
8
thecassino Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 4:20 PM
That’s like comparing Monday night Arena League ratings to Monday Night Football ratings. Two different animals.
Not really. It’s hard to create ad revenue from a sport that doesn’t have built in commercials. So the viewership has to be higher than something else that could fill that time slot. In this country there’s college football, college basketball and the NBA that can be put into almost any time slot and all will draw higher numbers than any soccer game that isn’t two of Man U/Liverpool/Chelsea/Arsenal playing each other.
9
thecassino Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 4:21 PM
Also, it’s hard to create ad revenue for a sport in a country where the vast majority doesn’t give a fuck about it.
10
The Fan's Attic Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 4:35 PM
but yet, SETANTA and FSC have been creating revenue for years. People will find a way and if ESPN can take a hit while it’s trying to get more people interested in soccer, they will certainly do their best.
11
tyduffy Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 5:11 PM
The advertising isn’t the issue. FSC has gotten real advertisers, though still with the occasional hairloss/impotence ad thrown into it.
I don’t understand why Sky winning the broadcast feed makes it cost-prohibitive for ESPN to buy the U.S. rights. They already provide their own announcers for the Champions League matches. It’s not an insane cost to bring Tommy Smyth and Derek Rae to announce a Premier League match or to just pay Sky to use their announcing.
As far as the ratings, the matches are on Saturday and Sunday mornings or, rarely, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. So, basically ESPN has nothing going on at that time anyway. If you figure that FSC gets like 250,000 for a game. ESPN networks have three times the distribution, ESPN branding, and strategic placement before ESPN events people are going to be watching. It’s not unreasonable they get a higher rating than whatever the hell ESPN would be showing at those times.
12
The Fan's Attic Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 5:19 PM
hell, they wouldn’t send them to the UK…they would just send them to the Bristol Broom Closet.
13
thecassino Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 5:36 PM
It’s not unreasonable they get a higher rating than whatever the hell ESPN would be showing at those times.
Like I said, if it’s a marquee match, like Liverpool/Man U, then yes. But is a lesser game like Man City/Bolton going to outdraw any college football game? Any college basketball game? Any NBA game? No, no, and definitely no.
14
tyduffy Says:
February 7th, 2009 at 9:40 AM
Like I said, if it’s a marquee match, like Liverpool/Man U, then yes. But is a lesser game like Man City/Bolton going to outdraw any college football game? Any college basketball game? Any NBA game? No, no, and definitely no.
As I said, those games aren’t on at the same time. ESPN doesn’t televise any live events early on the weekend mornings or on weekday afternoons. So it’s not conflicting with anything, and would probably draw more ratings than more episodes of NFL live.