here's a surprise: Beckham already setting things up to miss half of NEXT season

let's begin practicing:

Un cerveza, por favor.

Donde esta el bano?

 

I'm just saying that if Beckham wasn't stateside, ESPN isn't showing as many games as they have been...

 

Even though ESPN paid for the rights to show them?

 

That deal was done in August, well before anything about Beckham rose to the surface. I would assume the reason for it was the steadily improving ratings MLS had been receiving, in addition to the ratings ESPN got for the World Cup.

The family of networks as a whole have jumped on the soccer bandwagon. That's why the u-17 and u-20 world cup have both been shown on ESPNU over the summer, and women's world cup is going to have all of it's games broadcast over here starting this weekend. Add in the Champions League coverage, and that's a lot of soccer that's going out over ESPN's airwaves.

Here's a link to the MLSnet story from when the rights deal was announced.

http://web.mlsnet.com/news/mls_news.jsp?ymd=20060804&content_id=68212&vkey=news_mls&fext=.jsp

 

ESPN is whoring for soccer the same way they are for the Arena League and NASCAR...

How many MLS games did ESPN show before Beckham's arrival? How many have they shown since?

 

And they are showing every game of Euro 2008.

And their Champions League coverage has expanded every year, to the point where they are showing 4 matches per week and a recap show on Fridays.

 

I just want to point out that large swaths of the country get the Spanish language channels and I am assuming a lot more people than just "illegal aliens" are watching the soccer games.
I've gotten the channels where I live in Texas, and where I lived in Idaho and Washington.
So, here's guessing it isn't just the illegal aliens watching. Plus, last I checked there are large Hispanic populations that aren't illegals, who are probably watching.

 

They've had a Thursday night game of the week the entire season. In fact, most of Beckham's games have been seen on Telefutura.

 

They had weekly games last season, with the problem being they were shown on Saturday afternoon, which became even worse when football season started.

Now they have deals with three regular networks (ESPN, Fox Soccer Channel and Univision/Telefutura/Galavision) as well as an ongoing deal with HDNet, and have regular timeslots for all four networks. There's an excellent game on tonight between D.C. United and Chivas USA right after Middle Tennessee gets it whipping from Louisville.

 

Mizzou, I think you are really missing the reality here. Before Beckham (should this be described in year terms like this would be 0 ab and last year -1 bb? anyway) arrived in the US, before Beckham's contract was even under discussion with MLS, ESPN decided that they would show MLS games and actually pay for them.

Last year, and years previously, MLS would pay ESPN to broadcast MLS games on Saturdays. With very few weekday games scheduled this wasn't an issue. They titled these games "Soccer Saturday." It would usually be one game per week (which is about what they are showing now).

After the World Cup finished ESPN went and purchased the rights to MLS games and said "we'll create Thursday Night Soccer." This wasn't something that came after Beckham.

Once Beckham signed onto MLS and everyone knew he was coming, ESPN went back to MLS and said which games they wanted most on Thursday nights. Other games were added to their broadcasting schedule (games on Saturday and Sunday) which weren't initially supposed to air. So for that, MLS did have more games shown but it isn't so much more than what they were supposed to show already.

Make no mistake about it, though, if ESPN wasn't getting any ratings for it they wouldn't be pumping it as much. This isn't Arena Football where they bought into owning part of the league.

 

Angola, you should realize that Racist_QB is correct. We all know that Nielson households are predominantly made up of illegal citizens. How else do those Spanish channels ever get ratings?

 

I watch soccer on the Spanish channels all the time.

Alright officer, I'll come quietly......