Soccer On TV

Back To The Dark Ages

Remember when you couldn't see a soccer match in the States without a complex array of parking lot-sized satellite dishes?  EPL games were seen a day or a week after the fact, and forget ever seeing Champion's League (well, Cup Winners Cup, then) or La Liga, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A and so on.

Well, the last few gravy-laden years of soccer viewing in the U.S. led by Fox and ESPN (as well as "findable" Univision/Galavision/GolTV) are, evidently, over.

This article on ESPN's website hints at dark days ahead...football fans in the U.S. best prepare to get hooked up to every service they can find.  But it does auger well for our own MLS:  This webpage shows you how to get virtually every MLS game played in a season.

As the league has quietly made money and grown steadily over the past 10 years, perhaps this is what US domestic soccer needs most.  A complex, expensive and short-sighted TV arrangement for the European leagues.  And let's be honest, while the big clubs in England make a ton of money in the U.S., the rest of the would-be leagues never got a foothold.  If they end up on some Al-Jazeera second channel via dish only, well, they never will.  But the media blackout that would cause might encourage a few more spectators to start accessing MLS matches just because they are "around the corner."