More Football Matches to be Telecaste on Television soon

January 16, 2015 |   |  Videos

The Premier League and the Major League Soccer both will be looking to expand their exposure in television by having more matches televised and broadcasted by more channels in 2015.

The Premier League is working on introducing regular Friday night live matches and have a total 168 live matches available per season for a fan to be able to watch on their household.

Even some major technology companies such as: Apple and Youtube are believed to be thinking about bidding to buy digital rights for matches where they could have the liberty of uploading certain matches to their online platforms.

Meanwhile on the MLS, the 2015 will be bringing a new level of exposure of football to the United States which is not considered to be one of the biggest or most influential sports in the country. Univision, ESPN and Fox are all of the networks that will get an exclusive national broadcast window each weekend as they all signed a $720 million rights deal with the American League which starts on 2015.

The matches that are going to be broadcasted by the Univision network will have the chance of being viewed in English and Spanish as well as this increases the amount of audience that would be interested in sitting at home and watch their favorite club playing in the MLS.

This is the first time ever that Univision has ever had streaming rights to its MLS broadcasts as well as being the first time that Univision is going to be production their own broadcasts from their own site instead of having a feed produced by a simultaneous local broadcast.

Next year, ESPN will also have online streaming rights to every MLS game which is not broadcasted national in United States and this allows fans from across America to be able to watch matches through the website of ESPN and a number of their applications.

TV PAYS OFF

February 18, 2014 |   |  Sports News

Manchester United could thank the incredible popularity of football on TV for the rise in the second-quarter revenues. The club posted an 11% increase due to better commercial and broadcasting revenue. Manchester United have been going through a tough period since the start of the season.

The appointment of David Moyes to replace Sir Alex Ferguson has not worked exactly to plan. The club find themselves seventh in the table with only 13 matches remaining. Since they trail fourth placed Liverpool by nine points already, they cannot afford any more slipups. Read more

BT vs BSkyB

November 22, 2013 |   |  Sports News

The ongoing battle between BT and BskyB for the football broadcasting rights in England is only going to benefit the clubs over there.

BskyB is a well known name in England as they have been ruling the sports market over there since a long time. But, BT is now ready to challenge them. Recently, they have bought the rights of broadcasting the matches of the European competitions in England from 2015 to 2018 by paying a huge amount of 1.44 billion US Dollars. Currently, ITV and BskyB has the rights of broadcasting the European matches and the amount that they pay for that is not even the half of the above mentioned amount.

It’s a big setback for BskyB; that’s for sure. They would have loved to continue as the broadcaster of the European games even after 2015, but, BT beat them with sheer money.

Because of this new BT deal, the English clubs which make it to the Champions League are going to be benefitted a lot. They will get about 10 million Pounds more than what they are getting right now. The teams qualifying for the Europa League will also have the benefits, but, not as much as the Champions League sides.

The sports content has clearly become expensive in the last couple of years and it has been more so in football which is the most popular sport on the planet. So, every sports network wants to have football broadcasting rights and they are ready to pay ridiculous amounts of money for that.

Ed Woodward who is the executive vice-chairman of the Manchester United FC also had the same thing to say when he was asked about this new BT deal.

Woodward said, “The football content is becoming more and more expensive. It’s been the case with every sport, but, in football, it’s more so as this game is immensely popular all around the world.”

FOOTBALL MAKES GREAT TV

July 10, 2013 |   |  Sports News

The Confederations cup is proving to be extremely successful according to the latest TV viewing figures released by FIFA. The competition was started in 1992 and it has come a long way since then. It was a four-team tournament back then. There are still two matches left in the competition and it is already the second highest in terms of viewing figures. There was a real danger of the competition being suspended by FIFA due to several protests in Brazil, but the international football committee has decided to go ahead with the tournament and it is proving to be a great success.

The remaining two matches are expected to bring in a lot of viewers especially due to the importance. The third place play-off match between Italy and Uruguay will be followed by the final between Brazil and Spain. As the home team is involved in the final, FIFA has said that it expects record viewing figures for the final. The semi-final between Spain and Italy brought in just over 12.5 million viewers, which is better than the 10 million viewers for the 2010 World Cup semi-final.

The Confederations cup is proving to be incredibly popular in South America due to the involvement of teams like Uruguay and Brazil in the latter stages of the competition.

“FIFA has come out of this stronger. Football has played a positive part here and given emotion. When we say football connects people, it connected people in the stadium, perhaps unfortunately it connected people in the street. I can understand this social unrest, absolutely, but on the other hand, football brings at this time to the whole continent these emotions and hope,” said FIFA president Sepp Blatter after announcing the viewing figures.

Attendances for the matches have also been extremely encouraging according to FIFA.