American Soccer Fans will have lots of Chances to not Tune in to See David Beckham
By: Bob | February 6th, 2007
Normally when Major League Soccer releases its schedule it is met with a collective yawn except from the hearty diehards who follow the league. The universe is different now thanks to a one-legged import with nifty hair. MLS released its schedule today to much fanfare and as you would probably expect the $250 million man took center stage.
The league announced that David Beckham will visit every MLS city after his arrival in mid-July and that 16 of the LA Galaxy’s final 17 games will be broadcast nationally. Yeah, I’m pissed about not seeing that one game on August 5 against Toronto too. Hopefully YouTube will fill the void.
A total of 113 MLS games will be shown on ESPN2, Fox Soccer Channel, HDNet and Univision this season, which is awesome for fans of the league, but does lead one to ponder what the networks are thinking given the informercial-like MLS television ratings over the years. It shall be interesting to see what, if any, affect the all-Beckham, all-the-time coverage has on the number of eyeballs tuning in. I’m predicting a decent increase at first but in the end merely a minor bump in overall ratings. I think he’ll have a bigger impact on attendance at the stadiums than on television ratings.
The MLS season starts on April 7. In the near future we’ll be adding a Toronto FC blog to go along with the Kansas City Wizards, New York Red Bulls, DC United and LA Galaxy Offside blogs. Fans of all of the other teams are slackers, but you can change that.
By the way, the picture above shows the original MLS uniforms when the league started in 1996. No wonder tv ratings weren’t great. Some of them hurt you eyes just looking at them.
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Category: MLS
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Comments
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Gee. A picture of the initial rollout of MLS 11 years ago… Brilliant! Couldn’t find one more relevant?
BTW: MLS averaged the same rating as the NHL last year. Might want to fact check… Oh and I suspect there will be a bump in ratings this year.
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United States
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I’m sure the fact that for the first time TV networks are actually buying the rights to broadcast matches will make a positive difference with ratings.
The last 11 seasons MLS has had to buy 2 hour blocks of time and produce their own content. With the networks now having a stake in the number of views, I’m betting you’ll see a jump even before the spiced one arrives.
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United States
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