ESPN has acquired the US media rights to the FA Cup for the 2018/19 to 2020/21 seasons, a source confirmed to World Soccer Talk today.
As part of the rights deal, select FA Cup games will be streamed via the ESPN+ paid subscription service. The FA Cup rights were part of the deal that included the rights to Serie A, a story that we first reported in February after there was little interest in the FA Cup rights at the time.
All that changed on July 10 when Cristiano Ronaldo joined Juventus, thus spiking interest in the rights to Serie A and, by extension, the FA Cup.
In the end, ESPN paid approximately $55 million/year in a 3-year deal for the rights to broadcast Serie A and FA Cup as well as Eredivisie, Chinese Super League and A-League in the United States.
SEE MORE: Schedule of FA Cup games on US TV and streaming
The 2018–19 FA Cup will be the 138th edition of the oldest recognized football tournament in the world.
The third round of the FA Cup will commence on Friday, January 4.
In total, ESPN+ now streams the English Championship, Serie A, FA Cup, USL, League Cup, Chinese Super League, Eredivisie, A-League and out-of-market MLS games. ESPN+ also includes the daily ESPN FC soccer news and analysis show.
ESPN+ is $5.99/month.
100+ Channels With Sports & News
- Starting price: $29.99/mo. for fubo Español Package
- Watch Premier League, LaLiga, Liga MX & MLS
- Includes NBC, NBCSN, ESPN, FS1, FS2, TUDN, beIN SPORTS and more
Favorite Leagues At The Best Price
- Starting price: $7.99/mo. for Live TV Package
- Watch LaLiga, Primeira Liga and Copa Libertadores
- Includes beIN SPORTS, GolTV, TyC Sports and more
Many Sports & ESPN Originals
- Price: $5.99/mo. (or get ESPN+, Hulu & Disney+ for $12.99/mo.)
- Features Serie A, Bundesliga, FA Cup, EFL & more
- Also includes daily ESPN FC news & highlights show
Live TV, Soccer & Originals
- Starting price: $5.99/mo.
- Features Champions League, Europa League & NWSL
- Includes CBS, Star Trek & CBS Sports HQ
175 Premier League Games & PL TV
- Starting price: $4.99/mo. for Peacock Premium
- Watch 175 exclusive EPL games per season
- Includes Premier League TV channel plus movies, TV shows & more
ESPN+ has definitely hoovered up a lot of watchable soccer (and other sports).
How long with it stay at only $4,99 a month though? That is the question…
According to an article I saw, people pay $7 per home for ESPN. Now, I’m not sure if they front load the fees to get distributors to buy ESPN2 ($1) and the other networks, but if ESPN is truly $7 a month, ESPN+ can stay right the hell where it is.
Nice. All they have to do now is take away the La Liga rights from BeIn Sports and ESPN will become our one-stop-source for almost all our soccer needs. BeIn can keep the one-trick pony French league.
Will la Liga rights goes to ESPN in 2020?
If that happens, then there is no reason to even have BeIn Sports. Serie A is gone and Ligue 1 will not be enough for me. I used to enjoy their Express Xtra show, but lately with the American former coach hyper guy as a regular feature… it’s pretty much unwatchable. Much prefer the Spanish version though.
What does “select” games mean? Fox used to brodcast every FA cup game that was brodcast over there and the ones the FA did for overseas broadcasts. Will we get those? Like by the time they get to the round of 16 all those games were avaliable. And most of the round of 32 if i remember correctlh.
“Select” in that not every FA Cup game is broadcast. ESPN+ will broadcast those games that are available to them.
So…only the bbc and bt sport games. Not the extra matches that IMG used to do. Ok. Pirate stream it is then.
Why would this be? I predict ESPN+ will show every game they are allowed to show that has an international feed set of announcers. If that worked for IMG & Fox, why would it not work for ESPN? Even if only 10,000 (PAYING!) subscribers want to watch Villa play Watford, then why not show it? I don’t see why they will reduce the number of games vs what we saw from Fox.
Correct. ESPN+ will broadcast every game made available to them via IMG which will be more than what BBC and BT Sport provide.
Yes, during the 3rd/4th rounds in recent years, IMG/Input has generally offered 1-2 games at 3:00 on Saturday to international broadcasters. FOX always carried them, and ESPN+ will no doubt stream them too.
Are any games going to be on the regular ESPN channels?
DN, there’s always a chance that ESPN could decide to put a game or two on TV. But it’s meant to buy an acquisition focused on generating subscribers to ESPN+
My prediction is that FA Cup semifinals featuring big teams will be shown on ESPN, ESPN2, etc. Just can’t see them keeping (say) Chelsea v Man City FA Cup semifinal on ESPN+!
I can see the FA semi-finals and final staying on ESPN+ all too easily. Disney sticks to what makes the most money even if it angers some viewers. For example, the disgraceful bias they developed toward major market baseball teams… keeping small market teams off the air and undiscussed on SportsCenter… destroyed their reputation among serious fans, who read independent Web sites and watch MLB Network. MLS occupies a similarly prominent role in Disney’s plans for soccer, so expect it to get an order of magnitude more coverage than its soccer deserves.
Note that legal sports betting sites may well end up providing legitimate streams for the events in which they accept bets. Our major sports leagues already have deals like that with sports books in the UK and other European countries.
Unfortunately it seems more and more programing is going to online streaming and away from TV. I’ve never gotten into watching via streaming. Guessing the networks/channel see this as a way to control content and save on broadcast fees paid to cable/satellite and because of the increasing number of people who are cord-cutters.
The thing is people who are cord-cutters still need to get high speed internet (usually via a cable provider) to watch streaming and many of those providers decrease speed of internet if a person goes beyond a certain usage. IMO, in the end channels/broadcasters will find a why to get $$$ to make up for more people streaming and cord-cutting. In the long run, it won’t be much cheaper than cable/satellite to watch shows and sports.
ESPN+ streaming is awesome but the one problem I have is that streaming is at least 2 mins behind. Imagine being on Twitter and watching a game, you probably have an idea what is going to happen next because you are behind.
>> Imagine being on Twitter and watching a game,
You could always not look at Twitter…. 🙂
Hahaha true but hard to resist lol. Even if you avoid Twitter, there is always whatsapp and all that stuff
Look at your phone during half time.
If your watching the game can’t you put down twitter.
ESPN+ is awesome. The feed is clean and HD quality. $5/month I agree it will go up. While I also don’t like the fact much of US watchable soccer is online streaming it will help balance out the expensive contract the next go round. Just too expensive!!
This is an excellent point. I thought something similar last night as I was watching a Championship match from the weekend. The quality of ESPN+ has been brilliant. I hope ESPN recognizes to build the ESPN+ channel around football. Even if the price increases, I will stay with the channel as it has allowed to me to start having one place to watch matches from various leagues. The cost ($5 per month or only $50 when purchased annually) is minuscule compared to a monthly cable or satellite bill. In addition, not having to set DVRs anymore is equally brilliant. Miss a match — just come back to it at your next convenience.
This is good news that the FA Cup has found a home!
The BBC did show some first and second round games the last couple of years and I think Fox did, although I don’t totally remember. If first and second round games are shown in the UK then I hope ESPN+ would pick them up as well.
From the FA Cup website, here are the dates for the main rounds of the tournament this year.
http://www.thefa.com/competitions/thefacup/more/fa-cup-round-dates
First Round Weekend of Saturday 10 November 2018
Second Round Weekend of Saturday 1 December 2018
Third Round Weekend of Saturday 5 January 2019
Fourth Round Weekend of Saturday 26 January 2019
Fifth Round Weekend of Saturday 16 February 2019
Quarter Final Weekend of Saturday 16 March 2019
Semi-Final Weekend of Saturday 6 April 2019
The Final Saturday 18 May 2019
Less and less football is available on tv. Hate the trend, to be honest. Hate everything about it.
Guess it all depends on context. I remember having to pay $15 to watch a single EPL match on Saturday and Sunday or having to order expensive hardware and foreign language packages to watch Serie A. There is access to more leagues and competitions. You can pick and choose content from a variety of service providers and hardware solutions to watch on better and better TVs that are getting less and less expensive. It takes a little getting used to but to me it’s a great trend…. more content, more choices and less expensive
Man, never thought Stoke City relegating would have such a side benefit.
This is great. First MLS Live, then Serie A, now FA Cup. I quickly purchased the $49.99 annual subscription
I won’t be watching ESPN plus during the summer, so getting an annual pass doesn’t save me any money right now. Of course, if the five dollars per month price goes up, that’s a different story.
Man this is good news. With all the soccer plus the CFL, its a good service. The HD feeds are clean and the ability to watch replays at anytime is well worth it for me. I dont mind soccer moving to online streaming as long as its affordable and easily accessably. ESPN+ is doing all those things but god I wish they would have gotten those Champions League rights though…
I share your wish on the Champions League but life isn’t perfect.
At least there is Univision for Champions League. I would rather watch the games in Chinese than to know the score beforehand. Bleacher Report is a joke not worth $1 a month.
I am so happy about this! i really did not want to buy Fox Soccer match pass. Not because i didnt like it but because i already bought ESPN+ and B/R Live along with NBC Gold. I realize its $$ but i like the convenience of watching what i want, when i want and i love the early rounds of the FA cup.
Just noticed that ESPN only have the TV games scheduled on their web site for Nations League. ESPN Plus matches not listed yet, suspect that maybe they’re sub-licensing some of these of these to Fox.
ESPN+ matches are listed. I see all serie A games already
Do bars have access to ESPN+ or are they going to have the same issue that they had when NBC Sports Gold came out?
The deals to break up football into streaming packages are awesome. I have Roku with Hulu Live which includes ESPN, NBCSN and I have ESPN+,, B/R Tuner, BEIN a la carte and I get all the football there is and I pay $60 a month + Verizon Internet for $50 and I’m done… its much cheaper then DirecTV or Dish and above board, easy to watch anywhere I go.
Glad about the FA Cup coming to something I have, but will ESPN+ be doing a better job in the future with their commercials? Online services have this tendency of showing the same commercials over and over and over, and it is like Chinese water torture.
Why of all things… THIS! I watch mostly replays.. you can skip those if you wish.
Since ESPN wants viewers to have their broadcast channels at $7.00 per month, and ESPN+ at $5 per month, it would actually make financial sense to televise the FA Cup Final, and perhaps the semis, on either ESPN or ESPN2.
Fox used to put the game on Fox television. ESPN will probably elevate the final to the main sports channel (though not all the way to ABC).
No giving ESPN ideas. One platform only, PLEASE!
Will they have pre-view & review shows . And the draws for the rounds . Will it start from the first round in November . ?
I have a question. If ESPN decides to show some big FA cup games on ESPN or ESPN2, will they also be available to stream in ESPN +?
I doubt it. There’s a serie A game on espnews this weekend. Let’s see if it is in ESPN+ too.
All the Serie A matches on an ESPN Network station will not be on ESPN+.