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Details of FOX Sports/ Setanta UEFA Champions League Packages | Major League Soccer Talk

# Fox Sports Net will air 16 Tuesday matches from the qualifying rounds in August until the semifinal. Areas without an FSN owned station will probably see the matches on an FSN affiliate like CSN or Sun Sports, for example.
# Fox Soccer Channel will show two live games per week and three games on tape delay during the group stages.
# Setanta will have two live games each week during the group stages.
# FOX is looking into the possibility of using on site commentators from the international feed.
# FSC will have live pre and post game shows as well as a daily 30 minute wrap up show.
# The final for each of the three seasons of this package will be shown on Fx in HD. Fx is in as many homes nationally than ESPN 2
# Setanta will be re-launching its broadband product next month with enhanced video quality.

Despite the fact that ESPN2 is in more households, is on the analog/lower tier of most cable offerings, and is in more hotels, The detail overlooked here is that as an overall broadcasting strategy we need to look at this more as ESPN, ESPN Classic, and ESPN Deportes vs FX, FSN, Fox Soccer Channel and Fox Sports en Espanol. FSN will be used much like ESPN2 is used now – to show the first choice live game and is available is just as many homes as ESPN2, though not as many hotels. And FSC’s distribution is comparable to ESPN Classic, and better than ESPN Deportes – which has to be purchased with a Spanish Pack on most systems. Plus FX (where the CL Final will be shown) and some of the regional FSNs have HD channels – and FSC is supposed to be accelerating their HD timetable to the end of this year, not next.

I think this is a net positive for soccer fans. It’s yet to be determined whether or not it helps the popularity of the sport. But I do know that all those people who bought ESPN Deportes for Champions League coverage will soon be cancelling. After all the talk about ESPN raising their profile in the sport and even chasing the European market, they ended up lowbidding on the UK Prem rights and apparently on the US and Latin American CL rights. I expect similar with the US Prem rights. Which means they’d be out of the soccer business in the US with the exception of the World Cup and USMNT. ESPN Deportes suddenly becomes worthless for footy-crazy english-speaking viewers.

If Fox Sports as a collective does this right, they could do something for the sport which ESPN couldn’t because of all their other commitments. Given the fact that there are not a lot of competing live programming at 19:45 GMT on weekdays across the FSN network, there’ll be no danger of losing games because of the World Baseball Classic or the Masters or some other sport this demographic cares about. FSN has a lot of pre-produced content that can be moved around easily. The same goes for FX – so no worries about other programming running over and interfering with the start – esp for that Saturday CL final. Can you imagine if there’s a college baseball game that pinches the start of the CL final!?!?

Also, I doubt the Fox brains will homogenize and ruin production (or that UEFA will let them) with overly NFL/MLB-ized graphics and features and crap – something ESPN seemed ready and willing to do (remember the Beckham cam?). If indeed they take the CL International feeds instead of having Max Bretos call the games then we would only have to suffer through a pregame show – which I doubt will be that bad. The other good thing is that Derek Rae would be a spectacular get for FSC to call games wherever games need to be called. No more distracting ticker with Brett Favre and Alex Rodriguez nonsense. No more ruining the upcoming taped game with ill-timed highlights. And no more chopping off time from tape-delayed airings.

On top of it, who’s to say that grabbing these rights wouldn’t mean that FSC/Fox Sports Intl. couldn’t be an exporter of content to other countries (Caribbean, Australia, South Africa) in the future? Who says that Presspass-type show couldn’t be “acquired” and produced by Fox and run given exposure in one of those various timeslots on the FSN networks – like before Best Damned and after The [insert college football coach name here] Show? I’m sure Bobby McMahon and Fox Football Fone-in segments could be packaged together into something creative.

Of course Rae could also go to GolTV and improve their rag tag bunch. And he could still work for ESPN for the World Cup. What else is he going to do in Bristol? I bet he won’t even broadcast the CL Final on-site like he did last year. OK – I understand he has other work for ESPN Intl, but still.

But the thing I’m most salivating over is possibly being able to, in the group stages and round of 16, going 4-wide with the TVs in the man-cave with different simultaneous LIVE matches on FSE (w/SAP), FSC, FSN and Setanta!! IN ENGLISH!!!

THAT would not suck.

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