Premier League TV coverage

News out today that the Premier League has turned down the joint Fox/ESPN offer to re-up their broadcast deal.

NBC has emerged as the front-runner for a new rights deal, which would start next season ('13-'14) and run for three years. A formal announcement is expected next week (BeIN Sport remains an outside contender).

Sports Business Daily is saying NBC's bid is $83 million a year. Fox is currently paying $23 million a year and then sublicensing games to ESPN. Needless to say, NBC seems prepared to get behind the league in a BIG way.

Still, though, lots of questions here, given that the current Fox/ESPN partnership allows for so many matches to be shown (between live and tape-delayed matches, it's possible that every Fulham league match will be on American TV this year.)

NBC has their NBC Sports Network (formally Versus) which I would imagine would be the workhorse of the deal, and, of course, their broadcast network; but it will take at least three different outlets to maintain current levels of coverage (to say nothing of expanding). There are, of course, a variety of sister networks in the NBCU/Comcast family, and we could potentially see something similar to their Olympic coverage where non-sports networks like USA & MSNBC take on some limited coverage. There aren't generally that many programming conflicts on early weekend mornings.

Curious as to what NBC has to say (assuming the deal gets signed), detailing their plans.

I will say....it will be very, VERY, strange to get up on Saturdays and not automatically switch to Fox Soccer.

 

Thanks for posting Tim, from 23 mill + add-ons to 83 mill?? Wow, glad it wasn't BEin, since NBC has so many different platforms.

 

Shocked to say the least. Agreed about the FSC being the default channel turned on. Hopefully NBC will have something like FS2Go or this could spell doom for watching Fulham live.

 

I hate changes like this. There's no way NBC brings in more channels for this unless they feel this is a money maker. I really hope this doesn't turn into a situation where we're watching weekly City and United matches while the rest of the league gets highlights.

If I had to guess, I'd say that they would show three or four games in NBCSN every Saturday and might bring in a complimentary channel so they could show every game. They really don't have much going on with NBCSN so they could easily show half the games every week on that channel alone. Or my initial reaction is correct and we're screwed.

 

http://epltalk.com/2012/10/28/14-things ... e-2013-16/

 

So my guess is that Fulham will be streaming online a lot if they are only showing six games a week live and not showing any on tape delay.

 

Likely. Although one other possibility I read tonight is some sort of premium package similar to NFL Sunday Ticket in which you could basically buy coverage of the entire season. It's not entirely clear yet if that will simply be streaming or if they'll have cable/satellite partners come on and make it available on TV.

Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but I can't imagine NBCU is forking over $250 million without grand plans for its coverage. Fingers crossed.

 

If the online streaming is the case, I just hope they allow you to re-watch games online whenever as I mainly DVR Fulham games then watch them on Sunday or Monday when I have free time.

 

Fox really dropped the ball here IMO. The FS2Go app/infrastructure is just obsolete now? They were really spending money to update the site/content. Now what? Hopefully NBC looks at the Fox model and just makes it better for the fans.

 

More info. Note the sentence I put in bold. I have my doubts because I thought their olympic coverage was pretty bad.

 

Here is what Ives says about it,

 

Just have to hope that their no tape delay does not mean that they will not replay matches. You would hope that they would know that even though you are a Fulham fan you would still want to watch a Liverpool v Manure match that was on at the same time later that day/weekend.

 

As a bar owner I am thrilled about this. I think NBC and NBC Sports will do a fantastic job at covering all matches.

As a Fulham fan I am just as thrilled about this. I think Fulham is going to get a lot of TV coverage. Maybe not as much as those other 3-4 teams but I think will receive a lot of support.

EPL is becoming bigger every year here in the states. I am only one of (I can show all games though, they can't) multiple pubs in the Dallas area that shows EPL games every weekend morning. I think this move is only going to make it bigger.