As Bob Dylan said, the times they are-a changin'. When I was a child, European football coverage was nearly non-existant in America. If you didn't have a satellite dish the size of a small house in your yard, you had no access to live matches. If you didn't have a major market newspaper in your hands Monday morning, you didn't have access to a small one or two inch section of the paper dedicated to match results with zero analysis attached.
I was 6 or 7 years old when the North American Soccer League took its final breath. It was another decade before the US held the World Cup, and another 2 years before Major League Soccer began. Though the current leader for continuously active soccer club (Milwaukee Wave indoor soccer team, 29 years of continual activity) in the US is a somewhat local team for me, for myself and most Americans of my age, I lived in a soccer wilderness, especially when it came to the game outside our borders.
The first live European match to come into my life wasn't until I was 21 years old, when I saw the 1999 Champions League Final between Bayern Munchen and Manchester United on ESPN. Prior to that, my European football experience had mainly been recorded English Premier League matches on a FOX Sports channel. With growing access, my passion for the game finally began to blossom. I was part of a niche group within a niche group from my perspective. First there was the small band of soccer fans in this country. Then there was the small band of European soccer fans. (Now the domestic fans/players are the niche of the niche)
In 2004, after I had firmly become a fan of the English game (and the Italian game), I started to pay attention to the domestic football scene in the US with the debut of "the American Pele" Freddy Adu. My life was complete, or so I had thought. I had a handful of English, Italian, and American games on my TV each week, most of them live. Thanks to the internet, I had people I could talk to about the game, leagues, players, and issues facing the game in the US. I thought things couldn't get any better.
14 years after my world began to change with increased access to the game, and my awareness of it, the tidal wave some of us thought would never reach our shores may have finally arrived.
NBC: Every English Premier League match is shown live on NBC Sports Network, the main NBC network, or through streaming on their website. MLS has a weekly slot on NBC Sports and an occasional spot on the big network for major matches. They have an EPL preview and review show, as well as their own version of the English classic Match of the Day. They have a weekly newsmagazine style show called MLS Insider. On occasion they have a show called MLS 36, a look into the lives of an MLS player or players over a 36 hour time period.
ESPN: World Cup 2014. More often than not a weekly showcase match for MLS. They have US home and Mexico away matches for CONCACAF World Cup qualifying. Through one of their many channels they often have a Liga MX (Mexico) match each week. They have just debuted ESPN FC, a daily show on the current hot topics in world football. Their online arm ESPN3 carries most of their live content while also carrying a few Dutch Erediviese and Brasilian Brasiliero Serie A matches, with occasional international friendlies and Liga MX matches.
FOX: They have UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League. CONCACAF Champions League, international friendlies, as well as being the home of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. They have just debuted a daily show covering the hot topics of football called Fox Soccer Daily.
beIN SPORT: They show the top matches from Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A, and France's Ligue 1.
GOL TV: Home of the German Bundesliga, as well as some matches from the Argentinean and Brasilian leagues, often in English or Spanish.
MLS LIVE: Live streaming of every MLS match not on nationwide television.
For Spanish Language coverage we also have Univision, UniMas, and ESPN Deportes.
As you may have noticed seeing it all presented in one place, we have come out of the live soccer wilderness. And as for punditry, I haven't even covered the growing number of podcasts and blogs in the US giving us daily or weekly doses of the beautiful game.
The big boost we recently have received of course is access to every single live English Premier League Match. NBC Sports Network needed content, and has given it to us with soccer, bidding three times as much as the previous winning bid from FOX and ESPN for the EPL rights. NBC is proving itself to be committed to the game and its growth in America, mainly with the most watched sports league in the world, and on a smaller scale the domestic league in MLS. They have brought on board some of the best English language commentators and pundits to appease the soccer savvy public already in place.
ESPN, while having lost Champions League, EPL, and World Cup rights over the past few years, are seemingly still committed to the game themselves, and look to be players in the market when rights for the Champions League comes back into play, mainly on the back of current network head John Skipper. Their backing when Skipper inevitably moves on is still a question.
One of the many questions to be asked about this ever developing and changing landscape is the potential trickle down effect such exposure for the game to the masses may have on the domestic scene. A World Cup is coming up, something that usually captures Americas attention more than soccer normally does. But a commitment to MLS could change the sport domestically even more.
If MLS received a television deal similar to that of what the NHL has with NBC, the leagues salary cap would immediately double from that alone, allowing them to compete financially with any club in North or South America. With MLS Commissioner Don Garber's recent announcement of expansion, we see a look to the future of television rights. For years ESPN has told MLS that if they want to increase their television deal, they need to cover a larger portion of the important media markets in the country, in particular the south. At least 2 of the 4 expansion franchises Garber called for will surely be in this market.
With 250 million being thrown at the EPL, which sees similar ratings for any match not containing one of England's top clubs as most MLS matches do, a precedent and increased fee surely has been set. The trickle down aspect of TV could enhance the domestic game almost accidentally. If NBC and ESPN use their power to promote MLS better based on a larger financial investment on their part, the game itself and crossover fans could change the landscape even more.
But some questions that must be asked are, at what point might we start paying for the over saturation of the market? Can 5 channels with heavy emphasis on soccer really survive where not so long ago one barely could? And what if CBS tries to get their grubby little hands into the pie that everyone else is trying to break into the mainstream? If we truly are expanding beyond niche and into the mainstream, what is too far too fast? And could the future of the game in this country be mainly Eurocentric? Do the domestic league and national team have to grow along their own thread, or are they all linked?
Presumably over the next few years soccer will be finally getting a fair shake at the American sports landscape. With heavy hitters and financial backing, the break through many of us predicted and/or feared may finally be here. Daily shows giving punditry, live matches from a wide variety of leagues, and increasing fees for this content seems to be a final push toward a make or break moment for the beautiful game in America. We cannot deny that the landscape is shifting if not downright changing.
Whether or not the soccer tidal wave has finally reached our shore, or if it is nothing more than a fart in the bathtub is still to be seen, but the next few years will set the tone for the future of the sport in America. The time to get stuck in and promote the game with our friends and family and coworkers, as well as paying attention to our domestic game, is now. How big the wave really is may be completely up to us, those who have been paddling against the current for years.
Until next time, I will see you Off The Woodwork.
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