Sky Sports wins rights to broadcast MLS
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Sky Sports has won the live UK broadcast rights for MLS 'soccer' matches - on a four year deal. The rights are currently held by BT Sport.
A piece from the Sky Sports website here.
Could they be looking to poach more leagues away from BT in the future? Will MLS be of any real benefit to Sky Sports?
A piece from the Sky Sports website here.
Could they be looking to poach more leagues away from BT in the future? Will MLS be of any real benefit to Sky Sports?
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It'll be something different to watch but as the standard of the Red Bulls games I've seen live. I'll stick with FL72...
I agree about the standard not being the best. Clearly they're looking to capitalise on the arrival of Gerrard and Lampard but will they be able to achieve anything with it beyond what BT Sport and ESPN before them did?
Obviously they will hype it up massively ahead of the coverage starting but will it just end up nothing more than late night filler, leading them to let the contract expire, or could they have a chance of pushing it a bit more than has been done previously? We all know that the Sky Sports PR machine is good at these kind of things... SSN HQ will be heavily skewed to include MLS updates, for example.
- some attacking play
- the opportunity to see a range of players from around the world
- some outstanding atmospheres
- increasing sense of local rivalry
- a competitive league not always dominated by the same teams
So whilst many might point to the league not being the most competitive (and this could be backed up the fact that a player like Dom Dwyer who came from the English non-league scene to fire goals left, right and centre for Sporting KC) I don't always look to outright technical talent for excitement.
So I welcome this and hope that Sky will take the opportunity to show widely from around the league and don't just concentrate on the New York and LA franchises but also show some of the other teams and their games.
Might be switching off BT in the summer, the lack of content is gettimg worse.
Nah, I guess they will just broadcast the games without any studio set-up.
Some summer football for Sky is perfect for them, i have been using the MLS international app for match highlights for free, hopefully they are still able to do that
Bundesliga and Italian rights are Bts for a few years. Not sure about Ligue 1.
Sorry regarding the Bundesliga, BT extended their contact last year until 2017 or there abouts.
- No competition in terms of other football at that time.
- Football on during the summer months
- A few big name ex-PL players including Lampard and Gerrard this year
- Different league set up - MLS Cup, Playoffs etc
And most importantly - very cheap. BT will be annoyed they have lost it - but hardly a game changer.
http://www.btplc.com/news/articles/showarticle.cfm?articleid=%7bc0dcef5c-1d67-4607-a2b4-c725832e6367%7d
Last weekend Sevilla game on La liga kicked off 11.00am and Sky was not interested and it turned out to be a cracking 7 goals thriller! instead we were fed delayed coverage of Barcelona game by then anyone interested in La Liga would have known the result.
Again last week most Dutch league games were behind red button in poor SD! so was second half of Atletico Madrid game.
Sky claim to have 7 sports channels but still, in this day and age, either do not show the games they have right to because they are not Barcelona or Real Madrid or show them in poor SD quality behind red button!
The point is Sky need to up their game and respect all the rights they have and show them in full and in HD.
Can they show Premier league behind red button in poor SD? If they can't, why do they treat other leagues with disrespect?
So unless Sky can show MLS live, in full in HD, it would be another poor service from Sky.
Forget about Seria A as well, that's 2 out of the 3 gone.
Been announced BT have got those rights now until 2017/18.
Sorry JSemple didn't realize you beat me to it:D
Here's the national TV schedule for this season. Nationally broadcast games will typically air Sundays at 5 PM ET or 7:30 PM ET (so 10 PM or 12:30 AM over in England), which is an upgrade from the absurd and repeated 11 PM ET Friday kickoffs ESPN would churn out for West Coast teams.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/thegoalkeeper/2015-Major-League-Soccer-national-television-schedule.html
I do agree that Sky can be a bit frustrating with their coverage but no more than BT with their coverage. My main bone of contention with BT is the broad lack of repeats/full match re-runs of games (they sometimes do 60 or 90 mins highlights which are a bit pointless in my view), so I hope that Sky will do full match re-runs in the same vein as they have been doing with the Dutch league.
I believe the issue with the Sky coverage for La Liga is related to the fact that for some reason they have agreed to show only 196 games so are heavily restricted especially as they started the season showing 7/8 games per matchday. I don't know they would have done that as other foreign broadasters can show more games (see Liveonsat) but this was a statement made on the Sky Sports 5 thread here on DS, and there certainly seems to be some credence to that theory based on the decreasing number of games Sky have been showing when compared to the beginning of the season.
It would be great if Sky could agree a deal for the CONCACAF Champions League too which obviously features teams from the MLS although they typically tend to fare quite poorly against their Mexican counterparts.