Category: Leagues: Major League Soccer
Major League Soccer has a TV ratings problem, and it’s named FOX Soccer. During the penultimate weekend of the regular season when teams are typically fighting to finish in the top 4 seeds in the playoffs, you would expect FOX Sports to generate impressive viewing numbers for two vital games featuring clubs that are based in the top two TV markets in the country. Instead, Sunday night’s double bill of New York Red Bulls versus DC United followed by Minnesota United against LAFC averaged just 81,500 fans on FS1. That’s despite FS1 being in 84 million households across the United ...
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Many soccer fans in the United States are accustomed to getting up in the morning and watching matches from Europe, leading to burnout by the end of each weekend day. Others focus on Liga MX and Latin American competitions that run concurrent with Major League Soccer and USL Championship matches. Others simply don’t like the product offered by the domestic league in the United States and opt not to watch it. MLS TV ratings are poorer in the fall than during the summer. For those who take a very narrow Americanized-view of things this is due to the start of ...
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For the first time since the 2014 FIFA World Cup, ABC will broadcast a soccer match on its over-the-channel to viewers in the United States. The 2019 MLS Cup Final will get the honors when the game will air live on both ABC and Univision on Sunday, November 10 from 3PM ET. Executives will be hoping that the viewership on ABC will be an increase on the 2.2 million who watched the 1997 MLS Cup Final on ABC. As mentioned on several episodes of the World Soccer Talk Podcast this year, ESPN executives had been mulling over the possibility of ...
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Photo credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports In the same city that Major League Soccer calls home, which is also the number one TV market in the United States, MLS’s two teams in the New York region have been a TV ratings disaster. Despite the two MLS teams being accessible in more than 7.3 million homes in the New York area, TV ratings for nationally-televised games featuring New York City FC and New York Red Bulls have not “moved the needle” for the top-flight soccer league in the United States. Take a look at the recent regular season games that have ...
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As the popularity of Liga MX and the Premier League continue to grow in the United States based on the way both leagues monopolize the most-watched games on US TV each week, MLS is getting left behind. At World Soccer Talk, we analyzed all of the TV ratings data for 2018 to see how the three most popular soccer leagues performed. We went ahead and made it a direct comparison by only including the TV viewing numbers for the length of the MLS season to see how they did head-to-head. Let’s look at the total TV audience numbers: League 2016 ...
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Major League Soccer has kicked off 2019 right where it finished the 2018 regular season with disappointing TV viewing numbers on English-language television across both ESPN and FOX Sports, and a surprising drop in viewership on the Spanish-language Univision Deportes. Compared to the 2018 opening weekend, the viewing numbers for the nationally televised games this past weekend were: • Down 24% on Univision for Orlando-New York City, • Down 13% on ESPN for DC United-Atlanta United, • Up just 6% for LA Galaxy-Chicago and Seattle-Cincinnati on FS1. While the 6% increase on FS1 might seem positive, the average of 186,000 for both games ...
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Montreal (AFP) – Haitian-born Canada right back Zachary Brault-Guillard was obtained by Major League Soccer’s Montreal Impact on Tuesday on loan from French side Lyon for the 2019 campaign. The 20-year-old defender, adopted by a Quebec couple and raised in Montreal until age seven before moving to France, has spent time with the Impact in pre-season on a trial basis. “Zachary will reinforce the Impact’s defensive unit,” coach Remi Garde said. He said the young Franco-Quebecois had come up through Lyon’s youth teams. “He’s a defensive fullback who has potential to progress through daily contact with the Impact’s other professional ...
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There’s no doubt that NBC Sports has transformed the fortunes and perception of the Premier League in the United States, but it is often forgotten NBC Sports actually acquired the rights to show Major League Soccer (MLS) for three seasons from 2012-2014 before they acquired the US’ Premier League rights. NBC’s coverage of MLS was outstanding enough to win plaudits from fans and media, but as the US-based top flight league approaching its nineteenth season, MLS executives were — according to a World Soccer Talk source — demanding a massive increase in the rights fees to broadcast the domestic league, which ...
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