Fox Soccer has outbid ESPN and won the Champions League broadcast rights for the United States. I’m…not sure how I feel about this. The roaring waves of my basic fear of ESPN are crashing against the rock of my basic sense that they do a better job broadcasting soccer matches than FSC. On the one hand, Tommy Smyth. On the other hand, Max Bretos. This is how God made Norway, geologically speaking, I mean.
UPDATE: I’m hearing from readers whose sources are better than mine (i.e., better than Google) that people at FSC are flatly denying this story. Which is weird, because its point of origin was the blog of Fox Soccer’s senior writer, published on foxsports.com. It may just be that the announcement happened before FSC was ready for it, but the denials I’m hearing about sound a lot stronger than that. Hopefully we’ll know more soon; in the meantime, imagine a giant translucent Riddler-style question mark hovering over this entire post.
SECOND UPDATE: Every trace of this story has disappeared from Jamie Trecker’s blog on foxsports.com, and the original post has apparently been deleted.
THIRD UPDATE: However, Jeremy St. Louis’s Twitter feed—it’s come to that—continues to suggest that this is real.
FOURTH UPDATE: Now the tweet is gone! However, Jamie Trecker’s Twitter feed still repeats the claim. It’s weird. If Fox wants to kill this story, why don’t they delete all the online breadcrumbs at once rather than deleting them gradually one by one? And given everything the network has done to promote online accessibility to fans, why don’t they just, say, tell us what’s behind the confusion rather than trying to hide it? This whole thing is too trivial to be called a cover-up, but it’s curious.
FIFTH UPDATE: Unprofessional Foul is reporting that an anonymous source at Fox has confirmed that FSC has indeed won the Champions League rights. In which case, the question behind all this leaking and unleaking and re-leaking would appear to be, “What are you doing, FSC?”
Read More: American Notes, Champions League
by Brian Phillips · March 19, 2009
If Max Bretos is the new voice of FSC’s Champions League coverage, then I’m officially moving out of the City and back to the UK.
I don’t know—maybe his professional wrestling commitments will get in the way.
I wonder what the odds are that FSC will lure Derek Rae and pair him with anyone remotely sensible.
Damn. No more HD.
HD – That was my first thought too…
On the plus side, those Heineken commercials might be a lot less shattering at a lower definition.
The real loss here is that between ESPN and ESPN Classic you were able to watch both legs of the eight fixtures in the latest round of the Champions League. FSC is one channel how can they handle the the same volume of programming?
that’s assuming you are lucky enough to have ESPN Classic. I pay extra for the sports package (FSC included), but I don’t get ESPN Classic. Gotta love cable companies.
The internet may have gotten ahead of itself in spreading this story around—see the update above.
If it is true: Yeah, I hadn’t thought of the ESPN Classic wrinkle because I don’t get ESPN Classic (or ESPN Deportes, which actually shows alternate CL games live). But in addition to the volume question it raises a quality-of-selection question: Would Fox be better than ESPN at identifying the one game most people want to see? ESPN has had a terrible tendency to show, say, Chelsea-Juventus over Liverpool-Madrid for reasons known only to itself…
I can’t say FSC would be better in terms of games provided, seeing as the one English constant, the club that this year has been on nearly every week it feels like, is Newcastle United. Whoever’s pulling the strings there, be it FSC or Sky or Warren Barton, it’s terribly cruel to the American public, subjecting us to that without any rhyme or reason.
If true, this would suck balls.
And as usual, god only knows what this means in Canada. For some inexplicable reason, half the Champions League round of sixteen fixtures were ceded to the Telelatino Network with Italian commentary…which was kind of fun actually.
One other loss would be espn360 streaming coverage. Which would be a great loss to those who watch weekday afternoon “European nights” at work.
So just to keep one eye on the scales:
We’ve got, on the pro-FSC side, the absence of Tommy Smyth and the blow to ESPN’s worldwide-leaderishness.
On the anti-FSC side, there’s:
* The lack of HD.
* The lack of alternate game channels like ESPN Classic and ESPN Deportes, meaning a likely reduction in total coverage.
* The possible presence of Max Bretos, WWE career permitting.
* The loss of online coverage through ESPN360, which probably kills people’s ability to watch the games legally online.
* The fact that most people get ESPN as part of their cable package, while FSC generally requires a special subscription, thus almost certainly reducing overall access to the games.
I’m starting to think I don’t mind Tommy Smyth so much…
Fortunately it’s looking less and less likely that this story is settled—check the second update above.
…and there’s now a third update above with the latest action from Jeremy St. Louis’s Twitter feed. People, we are deep in this business.
I usually press mute for broadcasts and listen to music. I have always detested John Madden, an American football broadcaster, and that hatred has been transferred to all talking heads.
I feel like the anglos are too cold/obsessed with witticisms/inane facts, while the latinos rely on puns and incessantly roll their “r’s” to mock my own linguistic incompetence.
I’m glad that FOX has bought the CL rights so that I no longer feel a twinge of guilt when pirating their streams. ESPN at least made goodfaith efforts to promote MLS and broadcasted all of Euro 2008 in the states this past summer.
Isn’t the other angle of this that perhaps Fox would make more games (albeit on tape delay) available for viewing? I always presumed that ESPN showed only 4 games per matchday (2 on Tuesday, 2 on Wednesday) because they had “better” programming to put on. Wouldn’t FSC–who is always desperate for things to air–show as many of these fixtures as possible? Am I missing some technicality?
That being said making my argument for FSC on the basis that you might be able to catch the the 2nd leg of Villarreal-Panathinaikos on tape delay at 2 in the morning means I’m already kind of grasping at straws.
FSC needs new announcers. Max Bretos, whatever. But if they put Christopher Sullivan in there, with his bizarre Spanish-by-way-of-Eastern Europe pronunciation of player names, I would gladly go to Tommy Smyth’s house to listen to him talk about how great Man Utd. are this year. Every year.
Plus, don’t you just love it when Smyth says something completely irrelevant and Rae just ignores him and carries on? It’s delightful.
I do secretly kind of love their partnership. Say what you will about Smyth by himself, you can’t put a dollar value on entertainment like this.
ESPN reportedly wants the EPL and there goes the budget.
what day did his twitter feed say that? – i just checked and can find no mention of it.
The tweet is gone! That’s just happened in the last couple of hours. Jamie Trecker’s Twitter feed still makes the claim, however. Adding an update now.
If they bring back Michelle, I will divorce my wife to drool in front of FSC 24/7 …
New update above. It’s suddenly looking much more likely that FSC has the Champions League rights. Let the debate continue…
“What are you doing, FSC?”
I often wonder the same thing myself. But they are family, so I stick with them. On the other hand, Every Stinking Pitch Network? Bite me.
“Every Stinking Pitch Network”
Where do you guys come up with this sort of stuff? What does this even MEAN?!
I’m wondering about that one, too. Isn’t the problem that they hardly show any pitches, stinking or non-stinking?
Personally this frustrates me beyond. the bars I go to (the only ones local to me) do not subscribe to FSC, but they get ESPN. I, for years, could watch the Champion’s League games with friends and beer…that will no longer be the case with this bit of devastating news.
Every Stinkin Pitch Network refers to baseball.
Lost in translation.
“We’ve got, on the pro-FSC side, the absence of Tommy Smyth and the blow to ESPN’s worldwide-leaderishness.
On the anti-FSC side, there’s:
* The lack of HD.
* The lack of alternate game channels like ESPN Classic and ESPN Deportes, meaning a likely reduction in total coverage.
* The possible presence of Max Bretos, WWE career permitting.
* The loss of online coverage through ESPN360, which probably kills people’s ability to watch the games legally online.
* The fact that most people get ESPN as part of their cable package, while FSC generally requires a special subscription, thus almost certainly reducing overall access to the games.”
see, as I read this my thinking was: last minute away draw that feels like a win.
there are not many appendages I wouldn’t part with in trade for permanently silencing Tommy Smyth.
The other downside to this is that with ESPN losing the CL, that probably means that their overall coverage and interest in soccer as a network will go down. Whatever you think of ESPN, and I don’t disagree with many people’s complaints about them, their involvement in soccer is crucial to the growth of interest in the game in America. To me, it is a huge step that in recent months they have added weekend European scores to “the bottom line”. Less games on ESPN means less coverage and reason for them to pay attention. In the end, that’s not a good thing for soccer fans.
I feel that this is not good for soccer as it alienates those causal observers who are curious about soccer. Having the CL on FSC only reaches out to fans willing to pay, and without the outlet to convert causal/curious fans to “real” fans the sport cannot grow, like many “real” fans want in the U.S. As a student it is great that my basic cable package allows me to introduce the sport to my friends. Especially, in these hard economic times having a relatively free outlet benefits those who follow the sport and those who are curious about it
I think A Rod makes a good point – this past summer when ESPN played the Euro 2008 games, lots of my friends who are not soccer fans were asking me questions about the game and got “hooked”.
And the cable TV money deals will soon be a thing of the past – the internet has tens of millions of people hacking those feeds and the computer will soon replace the television altogether.
The worst for the viewers,Fox will always
give preference for Teams from England
Look at todays matches 09/16/2009
The best game F.C. Barcelona X Inter Milano will not be show live, Instead will be
Arsenal game Live. It is unbeliavable
Although I, personally, am delighted it’s the Arsenal match (Go Gunners!) that’s being shown, I understand your frustration. The Barcelona v Inter Milan will be a much more engaging game I imagine.
Good luck finding a place to watch it!
at least they are showing some of the other matches on a delay. ESPN would usually only show one more on a delay.
I think Inter – Barca shows at 7 E.T.