Last week, we talked about how GolTV was sitting pretty following their acquisition of the U.S. La Liga distribution rights back in March. Today, they cashed in on those rights, selling some 114 games to ESPN.
Rather than use La Liga as a platform to launch soccer as a viable sport into the American market, though, ESPN plans on relegating some 95 matches to either ESPN360 or their Spanish language channel, ESPN Deportes. Only twenty matches will be shown on ESPN2, and per ESPN Deportes general manager Lino Garcia they’ll be shown in such a way as to ensure that they “won’t conflict with the network’s schedule.”
So, in other words, ESPN is planning on completely cocking up the coverage of La Liga in the U.S. by forcing you to learn Spanish in order to follow the vast majority of the games. After all, only Latinos and foreigners actually enjoy watching soccer. Right?
Let’s put it another way: ESPN Deportes (which apparently also carries Mexican First Division, MLS, the Eredivisie, and South American World Cup qualifiers) currently reaches about 5 million households in the U.S. GolTV, which is considered a small channel, reaches 12 million. And while all of the ESPN Deportes matches will be simulcast in English on ESPN360, the vast majority of that “channel’s” 41 million viewers are college students who get the service for free at their school.
The two networks are already talking about “sharing” top games on an alternating week schedule; Gol TV will get top games one week, ESPN the next. What this will ultimately mean for cable subscribers intent on following one team is that they’ll need to effectively carry two channels to get every match. For a sport that’s frustratingly difficult to follow already, having to spend extra money every month to carry Spanish programming to watch the games you want to see is ridiculous.
ESPN gets rights to Spain’s La Liga [Sports Business Journal]
La Liga on ESPN [NY Times Goal Blog]
GolTV Sublicenses Some La Liga Rights To ESPN [Multichannel News]
The stupidest part of this is that Deportes is usually on the Spanish language package of cable service, so its usually expensive and pointless, unless you speak Spanish or really like Mexican soaps.
The worst thing about ESPN lately is that they’re buying stuff up and throwing it on ESPN360, then acting like it’s a primary offering. To carry it on ESPN360 is nice, but it’s never going to be my primary intake for sports; I only watch things on there when I have no other choice.
They’d also better get good European commentators for this.
This is actually an improvement for me. I have att uverse and goltv is on the sports package along with horse racing, golf and 10 other channels I don’t give a crap about for $10 more a month.
Me too, I think I’m in the same position in regards to getting goltv, so at least I’ll be able to see some La Liga
What about that other ESPN deal announced today w/the prem? I’m not going to see anymore Special 1 TV am I?
The EPL deal, as presented on EPL’s website, made it sound like ESPN only had UK broadcast rights…no US rights at all.
The US is not affected by that deal (directly), I’ll have more on it later today/early tomorrow.
[...] About ESPN and GolTV: Screwing Up La Liga Together [...]
ESPN needs to get rid of that stupid sports ticker on the bottom of their screen if they ever want to get any kind of ratings for their European soccer games. Soccer fans hate that stupid sports ticker, and it is outdated anyway because people just use the internet to look up sports scores.
I really don’t think a ticker is going to be what stands between ESPN and being taken seriously.
While the ticker can be annoying, its not that horrible. I look most of my stuff up online too, but if I’m sitting watching a game, I’m not on the computer so it can be rather useful.