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[~Devil Trigger~]

Good

The more Yaya Toure on TV the better

those are facts people, FACTS

 

[flyover]

That's mainly because FOX went HD early and their bitrate still sucks.
NBC HD is so much better.

I wondered why everything still looks so terrible on Fox.

 

[Arials]

.

You aren't helping yourself by posting that Phil Jones tackle which is still by far one of the most entertaining things that have happened anywhere ever.

Again for the new page:

 

[justjohn]

Good this way Fox can concentrate on covering the leagues that aren't utter crap, like Bundesliga and MLS.

I wonder which team will win the bundesliga this season. Really exciting league with so many potential winners.

Btw Word of advice to our American fans. Avoid Manchester United games. They've become one of the most tedious teams to watch in all of European football. I'm guessing van gaal's philosophy is taking some time to bear fruit.

 

[darkside31337]

Don't find the NBC coverage to be that good at all. ESPN did a much, much better job overall. Although I'm fine with more Men In Blazers.

 

[crimsonheadGCN]

MLS: $720m / 8 = $90m per season

EPL (lower estimate): $800m / 6 = $133m per season
EPL (higher estimate): $1bn / 6 = $166m per season

The difference between 07-14 and 15-22 are pretty large.

 

[xbhaskarx]

You aren't helping yourself by posting that Phil Jones tackle which is still by far one of the most entertaining things that have happened anywhere ever.

I guess if your idea of entertainment is English dudes crawling around on the grass, the Premier League is the place for you...

I wonder which team will win the bundesliga this season. Really exciting league with so many potential winners.

Whereas in the Premier League it won't be Chelsea or Man City, right? Perhaps this is finally Burnley's year, so unpredictable!

 

[RBH]

That seems like... a lot of money, considering the relatively low viewership numbers, and the limited amount of commercial time you can sell. Guess it's a prestiege thing for NBC at this point?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...n-the-english-premier-league-s-small-audience

 

[RBH]

 

[illmatic22]

Yeah it's great to see the sport gain more coverage here. I hope it it continues to grow.

 

[Death by BB Gun]

Whereas in the Premier League it won't be Chelsea or Man City, right? Perhaps this is finally Burnley's year, so unpredictable!

You're giving out about league competition, and you're a Bundesliga fan? The PL has three/four teams, which is a fuck load better than "Bayern, Bayern, Bayern, and maybe Dortmund or Wolfsburg if they're not out of it by February".

 

[xbhaskarx]

You're giving out about league competition, and you're a Bundesliga fan? The PL has three/four teams, which is a fuck load better than "Bayern, Bayern, Bayern, and maybe Dortmund or Wolfsburg if they're not out of it by February".

You're going on about league competition and you're a Premier League fan? The PL only has 3-4 teams, as you just pointed out! How is that competition? Bayern would crush all the mediocre teams in the Premier League if they were in it, so obviously quality doesn't matter to you. If you don't care about overall level and instead only value competition you should be watching MLS over the Premier League, as there are 8-10 teams that could win the league (and there is actually some churn as to which teams those will be in any given year) instead of just 3-4 (and really the odds of anyone other than Chelsea or Man City winning this year are pretty slim).

If three teams competing for titles while playing the highest level soccer is what you really wanted, you would be watching the Spanish league, where three teams have won the league over just the last four years, while all three also reached the Champsions League final over that time, with 2/3 winning it.

So you can't value either the highest quality product or the most competition and be a Premier League fan. Sorry.


Edit: THIS is a close competition:
6 teams within 0.09 PPG (3 pts. over a 34-game season).

 

[Trail Guide]

I cut the cord this year so I'm sad to see that it will be six years before there is a chance of EPL coming to the states without a cable subscription. At least Fox allows an online service for their games without requiring a cable subscription.

 

[RBH]

TV ratings continue to increase:

Less than three months after Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal committed to spend about $950 million to air English Premier League soccer games in the U.S., the deal is starting to look like a rare commodity in the hot market for sports rights: a bargain.

Premier League matches are just about the only major sports property in the U.S. showing any significant long-term growth in a splintering media environment in which executives declare victory when audience sizes remain flat or dip only slightly.

Thus far, in the third and final season of NBCUniversal’s original $250 million Premier League deal, matches are averaging 563,000 viewers each across all channels, a 19% increase over last year. The figure reflects the average number of viewers who are watching Premier League matches during a given time window, because NBC often shows multiple matches simultaneously on different networks.

Matches mostly are shown on Saturday and Sunday mornings between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern Time on the NBC Sports cable channel, or NBCSN, but also now appear regularly on the NBC broadcast network and other channels the company owns, such as USA.

By comparison, Major League Soccer games garnered an average audience this season of about 200,000 on FoxSports1 and about 250,000 on ESPN’s channels. On average, television audiences for MLS games have seen limited growth in recent years.

A spokesman for NBC Sports said most viewers watch Premier League matches live, though on the West coast, where the earliest contests air at 4 a.m., more recorded viewing does occur.

Audience size has risen 150%, on average, compared with three years ago when the games were on Fox and ESPN, which is majority owned by Walt Disney Co. In addition, fans have streamed 139 million live minutes of NBC Sports digital coverage this season, which began in August, 44% more than the same period last year.

“I think they have come up with a cost-effective, NFL-style package,” said sports media consultant Lee Berke. “It’s like finding a sleeper draft pick in the fifth or sixth round and realizing this could be your franchise quarterback.”

The Premier League still has a long way to go to rival the top U.S. sports leagues in popularity. The National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association still attract far larger audiences.

For example, ESPN’s telecasts of Major League Baseball games have averaged about 1.25 million viewers each the past three seasons. However, audience sizes for national, regular-season baseball games are nearly 40% lower than they were a decade ago, and the average baseball viewer is about 56 years old.

In addition, under its new deal, ESPN is paying MLB $700 million a year in rights fees, more than four times what NBCUniversal will pay the Premier League. The Premier League audience is about 38 years old on average, among the youngest in major televised sports and a demographic advertisers covet.

Sports media experts say they are more bullish about the future of the Premier League in the U.S. than they are about any other league, with the exception of the long-dominant NFL. Sunday football games on CBS and Fox routinely attract some 20 million viewers.

Frank Hawkins, a founder of New York-based consulting firm Scalar Media Partners LLC and a former NFL executive, said continuing shifts in the U.S. population and its tastes have led him to believe that the Premier League may eventually become the second-most watched sport in the U.S. behind the NFL. He cited the growing immigrant and Hispanic populations, the declining participation in youth football and baseball, and soccer’s popularity among both men and women.

“In the past, soccer being big in the U.S. was measured by the popularity of its domestic league,” Mr. Hawkins said. “That’s not true anymore.”

NBC’s game coverage is led by Arlo White, a Briton who had covered American football from the U.S. for the British Broadcasting Corp. and did play-by-play for the Seattle Sounders of Major League Soccer beginning in 2010. Former Premier League players Lee Dixon and Graeme Le Saux provide color commentary.

Standing in the media gantry high above the field at a recent Chelsea-Arsenal showdown at London’s Stamford Bridge stadium, Mr. White said success now lies in finding the balance between teaching the game to more sophisticated U.S. fans without being patronizing or using soccer phrases popular in the U.S. but nowhere else.

“I’ll never say ‘upper-90’ or ‘PKs,’” he said, rolling his eyes at the American vernacular for the top corner of the goal or a penalty kick.

NBC Sports says it sees opportunities to use Premier League matches to lead into the rest of NBC’s weekend sports coverage and, like the Olympics, believes it can help secure increases in carriage fees pay TV distributors pay for its channels.

According to media-research firm SNL Kagan, the NBC Sports Network, which is in 83 million homes, receives just 30 cents a month for each subscriber from cable companies and other pay-television distributors, compared with 98 cents for FoxSports1 and $6.64 cents for ESPN.

The new deal also gives NBC the option to sell the matches for customers to watch online and to license digital clips of the matches.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/english...-pond-appeal-burnishes-nbc-tv-deal-1446066122

 

[~Devil Trigger~]

of course its increasing

Everybody love to watch a car cras....eh I mean Chelsea FC

 

[shintoki]

Surprised people thought it wasn't a great deal. Soccer is growing and the EPL is the most famous league in the world

 

[Gonzalez]

TV ratings continue to increase:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/english...-pond-appeal-burnishes-nbc-tv-deal-1446066122

I wonder if there is a chance for expansion in the US, or maybe move some of the lower tier teams over to experiment. I mean we at least need some games to start when people are awake to really start a major boom.

 

[Mindwipe]

It's weird people cheer deals like this when they are exactly the reason why things like geofiltering will never, ever go away.

But when a film studio does it they're the devil.

 

[justjohn]

The league has been boring this year.

Spoiler

Because Chelsea have beyond shit

 

[Arials]

I wonder if there is a chance for expansion in the US, or maybe move some of the lower tier teams over to experiment.

If you knew anything about the way English football is structured you'd know this could never happen. Even a MK Dons situation would never be allowed to happen again.

 

[Boss Mog]

Really glad to hear that NBC will keep the rights for another 6 years. They do a great job and the channels (NBC, NBCSN and USA) are readily available even with the most basic of cable subs which will help the game get more fans in the US.

I was pretty worried that Qatar would come in with their money and ruin football even further by buying the rights and putting games on their BeIN Sports channels that almost nobody has.

 

[Kurt Angle]

I need a team to support. Someone sell me on a team.

stoke city, no one can beat them on a wet Wednesday night

 

[smokeandmirrors]

The league has been boring this year.

Spoiler

Because Chelsea have beyond shit

On the contrary I'm enjoying it immensely because they are shit.

 

[Gonzalez]

If you knew anything about the way English football is structured you'd know this could never happen. Even a MK Dons situation would never be allowed to happen again.

Come on, Newcastle should be in Delaware where they belong.

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

Nice to see this topic bumped

You're going on about league competition and you're a Premier League fan? The PL only has 3-4 teams, as you just pointed out! How is that competition? Bayern would crush all the mediocre teams in the Premier League if they were in it, so obviously quality doesn't matter to you. If you don't care about overall level and instead only value competition you should be watching MLS over the Premier League, as there are 8-10 teams that could win the league (and there is actually some churn as to which teams those will be in any given year) instead of just 3-4 (and really the odds of anyone other than Chelsea or Man City winning this year are pretty slim).

those odds though

 

[Fëanorian]

Glad NBC kept the rights for the premier league, wish they had better commentary though. I do prefer BeIn sports over NBC, just better content and commentary.

 

[woodchuck]

Nbc does an amazing job. They also don't treat their viewers like idiots.

 

[Man God]

That seems like... a lot of money, considering the relatively low viewership numbers, and the limited amount of commercial time you can sell. Guess it's a prestiege thing for NBC at this point?

I still have no clue how anyone makes money on premium soccer television rights outside of expensive pay channels.

 

[Bold One]

Lol Chelsea....


that is all

 

[Beefy]

Yet still tickets are crazy expensive.

 

[milanbaros]

Compare the premier league table to the rest of Europe and people still claim it is boring and predictable.

I guess all the excitement is in Germany, right?

 

[RBH]

NBC Sports averaged 514,000 viewers per Premier League match this year, up 7% from last year.

https://twitter.com/darrenrovell/status/733044360502255616

For the third consecutive year, NBC Sports Group set a record for average viewership. Across all networks, NBC Sports Group averaged 514,000 viewers per match window - up 7% from last season's then-record average (479,000). This year's average is up 134% from the season prior to NBC Sports Group's debut (220,000 viewers on ESPN, ESPN2 and FOX Soccer in 2012-13).

NBC Sports Live Extra saw 118% growth over last season's record in live minutes streamed (full details below), and this season delivered 9 of the 10 most-streamed Premier League matches ever.

NBC Sports Group's coverage of the 2015-16 Premier League season - which concluded yesterday with the rescheduled Manchester United-Bournemouth match -- reached more than 36 million viewers, a record and an increase of 26% over last season (28.7 million).

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/...ks-Records-for-Second-Straight-Year-20160518#

 

[D i Z]

Cool.

 

[Primus]

I was huge with NBC Sports Live Extra on my iPad this football season. App was a lifesaver.

 

[MCN]

I didn't know Americans could watch Sunderland embarrass themselves for half the season, before remembering how to play football!

 

[Tagyhag]

Wow that's actually more than I thought, good them.

They're obviously playing the long game.

Considering our changing demographic, soccer will be the most watched sport down the line.

 

[flyover]

Every week of the season, I'm grateful NBC got the rights. They've done such a great job, and Fox was so shitty.

 

[The Chosen One]

Every week of the season, I'm grateful NBC got the rights. They've done such a great job, and Fox was so shitty.

I also absolutely love NBC's Match of the Day highlights. It's very well produced. Instead of just being highlights of the goals, you get a nice 3-5 minute highlights of the game, which give you a good sense of the ebb and flow of the game.

Another reason it's brilliant and smart by NBC because allows viewers to get educated on some of the mid and lower table teams, instead of just watching the top 5. Because of he Match of the Day highlights, I knew about the players on Leicester City last year long before their title run.

If FOX was smart, they would do a high production highlight show of the Bundesligue. But they won't and that's why most Americans won't pay attention to the Bundesligue outside of Bayern Munich and Dortmend.