How much (do) we need the middle men who broadcast soccer

5 Comments

1. 

   Mercator

   January 23, 2022 at 12:21 pm

   Bang on, what is Bein doing not showing live games from one of the few big properties they have? Putting them on the Bein Xtra channel, with commercials, is worse for the fan and certainly harder to find. They don’t even have a banner on the main channel saying tune to Xtra for AFCON – I’ve been chatting and people don’t think the game is on because they tune to Bein and its Turkish league or something and they figure the match isn’t being broadcast. I don’t see how it makes business sense, its not like they have other stuff to show. The commentary is not consistent, sometimes it goes out for 5-10 minutes and a few times it hasn’t been aligned with the crowd noise so the announcer is much louder or quieter than the crowd. Really poor, no real recap or pregame either. The Xpress program is still all Ligue 1 reviews, almost nothing on AFCON. It’s been an entertaining tournament though and with Ghana and Algeria out there have been upsets. Nigeria-Tunisia today and Egypt – Ivory Coast wends should be good and probably will produce a finalist, but Morocco looks very good lately so I think are my favourites at this point. We will see.

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2. 

   dave

   January 21, 2022 at 4:57 pm

   Enjoyable discussion as usual. Nice variety of topics.
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   The DTC model is interesting and may merit a more detailed discussion. Among other things, there are trade-offs related to the depth and breadth of interest of the potential audience.
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   Some companies accept rather onerous terms to be included at Amazon or Walmart, some choose to only sell direct, some use a hybrid model, etc. Often for good reason. The same may be true when considering optimal models for a sports league.
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   In a touch of interesting timing, I was listening to the podcast as Sargent scored a golazo and a goal for Norwich. The first occurred as I was listening to Kartik share his thoughts about US players in Europe vs. MLS. What are the odds?

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3. 

   jason

   January 21, 2022 at 1:38 pm

   The Russian Premier leauge has their games on youtube. Something I learned last year listening to WST in fact. They have 1 game each week with no commentary. I LOVE IT! Makes it replayable too. I would love sports to expand their offers for games with no commentary. MLB.tv used to have it for their baseball games but I dont think it is there anymore. Media companies seem to be scared of this. Its the one thing that has consumer demand that they won’t meet.

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4. 

   Turfit

   January 21, 2022 at 11:06 am

   I’m usually defending beIN Sports but I must agree that beIN has dropped the ball on the Africa Cup of Nations. I do not like commercials during the match but since it is only on the Extra channel (their free channel), I understand. But my biggest complaint is that they cut completely away from the match, why not leave the match on in a small window during the commercial? beIN also seems to be having issues with the feed coming from Africa in at least two of the matches that I was watching, I’m assuming this issue is with ACoN and not beIN but I could be wrong. An easy way to sum up the tournament so far (play and broadcast) is Senegal won their group stage by scoring ONE GOAL.

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5. 

   Roberto

   January 21, 2022 at 9:24 am

   There is often more talk about the commentators of games, then the actual games. If I know the teams, the sound is often muted and that makes the games more enjoyable.

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