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ESPN+ acquires Copa América rights in English and Portuguese

Popular streaming service ESPN+ has acquired the English-language and Portuguese-language rights to the 2019 CONMEBOL Copa América for viewers in the United States, a source revealed to World Soccer Talk.

With Telemundo Deportes already having acquired the Spanish-language rights in the United States, that means that soccer fans will have plenty of choices this summer when they watch the tournament that will feature a line-up of South America’s biggest soccer stars including Brazil’s Neymar, Copa América Winner Luis Suarez of Uruguay, Argentinian soccer legend Lionel Messi, and Colombia’s James Rodriguez, among many others.

All 26 games will be broadcast live in English and Portuguese on ESPN+, which offers a free 7-day trial to new users.

SEE MORE: Schedule of Copa América games on US TV and streaming

Hosted in Brazil, the 2019 Copa América runs from June 14 to July 7, which will be the 46th edition of the quadrennial international men’s soccer championship organized by South America’s soccer ruling body CONMEBOL.

The broadcast of the 2019 Copa America will be during a similar timeframe to the Women’s World Cup (June 7 to July 7) and CONCACAF Gold Cup (June 15 to July 7).

According to a World Soccer talk source, all of the games in English and Portuguese will be streamed exclusively on ESPN+ and not available on TV.

As of press time, ESPN declined to comment about the Copa America rights.

With ESPN+, you can stream Serie A, UEFA Nations League, Championship, League One, League Two, FA Cup, League Cup, Coppa Italia, Supercoppa Italiana, Eredivisie, Danish Superliga, Chinese Super League, Indian Super League, Australian A-League, Sweden’s Allsvenskan, MLS out-of-market games and USL.

ESPN+ is only $5.99/month.

In addition to all of the soccer coverage, ESPN+ also includes a selection of live games from MLB, MLS, NHL, select PGA TOUR golf, Top Rank Boxing and Grand Slam tennis from Wimbledon to the US Open and Australian Open. Plus you get instant access to your favorite college sports like football, basketball, lacrosse, softball and more.

There’s also the daily ESPN FC show, 30 For 30 documentaries, exclusive access to studio programs and more.

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47 Comments

47 Comments

  1. locofooty

    May 31, 2019 at 4:08 pm

    ESPN Deportes Radio will have all the matches.

  2. CTBlues

    May 31, 2019 at 3:01 pm

    ESPN FC this week started promoting that they have the English rights to the Copa America

  3. ROBERT

    May 28, 2019 at 8:52 pm

    Question for WST. After the 2016 copa america centenario I asked who had the rights to the 2019 Copa America. WST said it was Bein sports. What happened in the since then? Wonder since at the time it seemed fox wanted future joint Copa America Centenario
    TV right because they couldn’t get the rights for the official Copa tournament. Excited to see how ESPN covers it.
    Thanks

    • Christopher Harris

      May 29, 2019 at 8:56 am

      Hi Robert, that was a mistake on my part. I thought beIN SPORTS had a very good chance of continuing the rights they had.

      • ROBERT

        May 29, 2019 at 12:21 pm

        Thanks for the clearing that up.

  4. CTBlues

    May 21, 2019 at 1:17 pm

    I find it funny that if ESPN got the rights to it in English you would think they would want to start promoting it. They haven’t even mentioned it on ESPN FC yet.

  5. Azer

    May 19, 2019 at 11:53 am

    Telemundo is only in SD in many markets with black stripes on the screen, no HD. Comcast and others simply don’t care about the channel. Who wants to watch the beautiful game in SD with a narrowed screen and a foreign language in the 21st century? not me. I might just subscribe to ESPN plus and enjoy the Copa America online. The Copa should have gone to Univision or ESPN Deportes as both networks are in HD.

    • locofooty

      May 28, 2019 at 5:53 pm

      I can’t believe another major sports tournament will pass by and a national HD signal hasn’t happened yet. Olympics, Women’s WC, World Cup and now Copa America. Will have to go through Apple TV once again. Comcast/NBC/Universal truly don’t care about Telemundo.

  6. toto Hidalgo

    May 18, 2019 at 1:08 pm

    THIS article is try to trick people by saying ” will be streamed exclusively on ESPN+ and not available on TV.” All the games will be on Telemundo FOR FREE!!! this all has to do with PC bull crap. they don’t want people watching copa America because fifa purposefully made the women’s world Cup , copa American ,and the CONCACAF Gold Cup all during he same time. A lot of people at ESPN thought this was a huge slap in the face to the womens world cup because it was going to take people away from watching womens soccer. Here’s a thought , how about not being but hurt at the fact that the womens world cup will never have the same broadcast rating and corporate sponsors that Copa America and mens wold cup have , and just let people enjoy the fact that there are three different tournament to watch on tv . but instead ESPN wants to have people pay to watch games on their phone

  7. David K

    March 27, 2019 at 2:34 pm

    Does World Soccer Talk stand by its reporting? Why would ESPN deny the deal?

    • Christopher Harris

      March 27, 2019 at 2:43 pm

      David, we stand by our reporting. My source says that ESPN+ will broadcast the tournament. But they may not be ready to announce the deal yet until either (a) all of the legalese has been completed and/or (b) CONMEBOL gives them permission to make the news public.

  8. Mexico Copa América 2019

    March 21, 2019 at 4:24 pm

    Espn said they denied Copa America Rights.

  9. JP

    March 21, 2019 at 9:26 am

    Agreed, from a promotion stand point beIN is great for La Liga. On + they would likely get lost in the shuffle like Serie A with the one odd match shown on TV a weekend….and probably not even Barca or Real Madrid as they’d want to keep most of that on + to entice subscribers. Juve is usually shown on +, marquee matches never on TV.

  10. JN

    March 21, 2019 at 8:38 am

    I am also tired of thing going behind a paywall, but we (in hour house hold) are streaming more things anyway. Our cable company will never add BeIN, and the only reason I have it now is by splitting the FuboTV service with my son (he gets nascar and I get La Liga out of this). Cable has been kept around for ESPN and some other things.

    But at least we will get access to Copa America which is better than not getting it at all.

    About La Liga going to ESPN+, I am not so sure about this. If they they just use the world feed, then the league won’t get to much promotion. Since BeIN is not spread so thin, more games are available with English commentary than in previous seasons (not every provider supports SAP).

    If ESPN+ gets La Liga or other competitions, when does the price go up? I am expecting a rate increase this fall. Does it get to a point where some of us have to make decisions about cutting something else? This year it was an easy one… no B/R live for me. I didn’t watch too many of the Europa league games, and I miss a lot when the ULC games are on weekdays. Plus, it sound like that the coverage is a train wreck. At least ESPN+ is reliable (in our house at least).

    • CTBlues

      March 26, 2019 at 8:22 am

      It sucks that Playstation Vue couldn’t come to an agreement with BeIN because it is clearly the best streaming service with all the ESPN owned channels, NBC Sports channels, Fox Sports channels, CBS Sports, Telemundo, local cable sport channels, and locals. The only thing you don’t get is the Univision owned channels and BeIN channels. Also probably the best DVR service among the streaming TV services and best picture quality except for maybe Fubo’s 4k steams of certain games.

      • Monte

        March 26, 2019 at 9:52 pm

        Agreed, I dropped Playstation Vue when they dropped beIN.

        • CTBlues

          March 29, 2019 at 1:19 pm

          If I drop cable TV I will go back to PS Vue even though it doesn’t have BeIN. I don’t really watch La Liga much so it doesn’t mean that much to me.

  11. daniel

    March 20, 2019 at 11:28 pm

    really getting tired of everything behind a paywall

    • cm asia

      March 21, 2019 at 1:56 pm

      Cable and Satellite TV are “Paywalls”, too…

      • Yespage

        March 22, 2019 at 10:35 am

        The difference is a lot of the content behind new paywalls were being provided as part of other services we were paying for. Champions League and Europa coverage on FS1 and FS2 showed a lot of games. Now, our cable/sat bills are the same, despite the significantly reduced number of matches.

        FA Cup is gone, but the cable/sat bills haven’t dropped. It is costing more for the content we used to pay less for.

    • Me

      March 21, 2019 at 2:27 pm

      Try living elsewhere around the world where sport on TV is considered a premium product. As far as I’m aware, the US is the only country to have live sports so frequently in basic to mid-tier packages. Pretty much every other country in the world charges an extra subscription for it, in a HBO/Showtime kind of way.

  12. Amelia

    March 20, 2019 at 7:17 pm

    Chris what’s the ballpark $$ ESPN paid for these rights? I think it was reported that beIN paid around $15M for the 2015 tournament

    • Eddie

      March 20, 2019 at 7:25 pm

      Instead, ESPN and ESPN deportes could get la Liga and copa de rey after bein expire in 2020
      It could go ESPN or others ?

  13. Brendan

    March 20, 2019 at 3:15 pm

    I see ESPN have required the rights to The International Champions Cup for the next 3years from Revelant Sports who by the way have the rights to La Liga for next 15 years so watch this space to see will ESPN get the La Liga rights after May 2020

    • Eddie

      March 20, 2019 at 4:08 pm

      What about Univision or Telemundo are they interested in getting la Liga and Copa del Rey rights after May 2020

      • NaBUru38

        March 27, 2019 at 2:17 pm

        Either would be massive.

  14. Ritchie

    March 20, 2019 at 1:39 pm

    I may just get the annual pass for ESPN+. Cancelling it in the summer, like I’d planned to, is a cheesy move anyway…now I’m not even tempted to.

    By the way, what is the status of the US La Liga TV contract? I’d think that should be up for bidding soon. That’s really the last bit of prized inventory that BeIN sports holds.

    • Christopher Harris

      March 20, 2019 at 1:58 pm

      LaLiga rights end in May 2020, so bidding for the rights for the 2020/21 season onwards will begin later this summer/early fall.

  15. Wayne

    March 20, 2019 at 1:01 pm

    The joy of watching with friends and strangers in a pub is gone with ESPN +

  16. Azer

    March 20, 2019 at 11:39 am

    ESPN Deportes should have acquired the rights to the Copa America in Spanish with ESPN3 in English. If the USMNT participated in the Copa, perhaps the games would be on TV.
    Also, UDN is so much better than Telemundo.

    • John G.

      March 20, 2019 at 12:52 pm

      You are dreaming if you think Disney en Español would pursue a policy contradicting Disney in English. Disney proclaimed that futbal would be on ESPN+ and it was done.

      • Azer

        March 21, 2019 at 12:00 am

        Hello John,
        What should happen to ESPN Deportes in your opinion, if they’re not going to have any football? What happens if ESPN Deportes decides to leave the company? How would that affect ESPN/Disney financially? I hope they would leave, do something.
        Stop being a parrot for Disney. I’m not interested in their talking points.

  17. Nate

    March 20, 2019 at 11:26 am

    Will ESPN have a commentary and studio team?

    • Steve

      March 20, 2019 at 5:50 pm

      Since it’s just being shown on + rather than their regular channels, they’ll likely just used the English commentary world feed like they do for everything else.

      • NaBUru38

        March 27, 2019 at 2:15 pm

        I don’t think that Conmebol has a world feed.

        • Daniel Ormsby

          May 21, 2019 at 8:21 am

          They have a world feed. In 2016 the World Feed broadcasts were available on Fox Soccer Match Pass stateside. Dave Woods, John Roder, Dan O’Hagan, John Helm, and Tony Lockwood served as the World Feed commentators for the 2016 edition.

    • Nate

      June 10, 2019 at 4:39 pm

      Apparently Ale Moreno and Fernando Palomo will be the match commentators. I don’t know anything else

  18. Johninatl

    March 20, 2019 at 11:23 am

    Great news! If you thought you might let your subscription to ESPN+ lapse over the summer, this is a great reason to keep/renew/subscribe!

    Already looking forward to this tourney!

    • JP

      March 20, 2019 at 12:10 pm

      But it’s on free to air television via Telemundo. Much like the UCL and EL on B/R Live and Univision, makes sense to just watch the free telecasts in Spanish. Can see what’s happening, don’t need commentary.

      • Me

        March 21, 2019 at 2:23 pm

        It’s $4.99 a month… times can’t be that hard for you, surely?

        • JP

          March 21, 2019 at 2:35 pm

          They’re not and I already have it, but since the tournament will also be on Telemundo will let it lapse during the summer until Serie A starts up again. Never tried B/R Live thanks to having Univision and access to watch even non televised matches online through cable authentication.

  19. JP

    March 20, 2019 at 9:28 am

    Too bad beIN didn’t get it, they did a great job in the past promoting it. But with Telemundo already getting the Spanish language rights probably didn’t make sense for beIN to bid for English only and not be able to use for beIN En Espanol, where probably the most interest would be.

    • Monte Reed

      March 20, 2019 at 9:56 am

      I agree

  20. Monte Reed

    March 20, 2019 at 8:45 am

    Since I already subscribe to ESPN+, this is great news!!!!

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