Sunday’s Serie A debut on ESPNEWS will feature two very familiar voices to soccer fans in the United States.
With the anticipation building for the Torino-Roma game that’ll kick off at noon on Sunday on ESPNEWS, ESPN will feature Mark Donaldson as commentator and Matteo Bonetti as co-commentator.
Donaldson has been commentating matches for ESPN since 2010, and has called Serie A matches for several years for the company’s international networks. Most recently, Donaldson has been commentating games from the International Champions Cup as well as several high-profile friendlies that aired across the ESPN networks.
Bonetti will be a very familiar voice to the fans who have watched Serie A on beIN SPORTS for years. He’s an authority on Serie A. He grew up in Milan and watched many of the club’s greatest players that had a tremendous influence on his life. More recently, he’s been one of the most familiar voices on the beIN SPORTS network where he has co-commentated matches for Serie A, the Championship, Ligue 1 and other leagues.
As Bonetti begins a new chapter in his career at ESPN, his time at beIN SPORTS is coming to an end after handing in his resignation.
ESPN and ESPN+ have reached an exclusive, multi-year rights agreement in the United States for Italy’s Serie A. The agreement will bring more than 340 matches per season to ESPN+, the new multi-sport, direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service from The Walt Disney Company Direct-to-Consumer & International (DTCI) segment and ESPN.
Starting this month, ESPN+ will carry an average of nine matches live each week from August through May, while ESPN networks will televise a Serie A Match of the Week — close to 40 matches per season. Most telecasts will air on ESPN and ESPN2, and the Match of the Week will also be available in Spanish on ESPN Deportes. The 20-team Serie A is home to some of global football’s most recognizable and storied clubs, including Juventus FC, AC Milan, AS Roma, FC Inter Milan and more.
Coverage of Serie A will also feature year-round news and highlights content across ESPN platforms. Additionally, ESPN+ will exclusively feature one-hour season preview and review programs, a weekly preview and highlight shows and a Serie A goals of the week program.
All of the Serie A matches on ESPN+ will feature the world feed for the commentary.
Not bad ! I can deal with Matteo, I also enjoy the Serie A production of weekly news and highlights with previews of the weekends action. Takes me back to the fox soccer chnnale days when I would watch those shows regularly.
So it sounds like they will use the world feed for all games on + and use Donaldson and Matteo on whatever game is on the ESPN networks? If so, it gives ESPN an opportunity to deliver more of a branded product for the games shown on the networks.
I would love for ESPN tp shanghai Ray Hudson form BeIn. That would be magisterial!
Omfg.. your off your rocker if you think Hidson is a decent announcer … if you like Darts.. he is your man.. but for football.. totally ridiculous
Cantona—-
Now if they can also get Andres Cordero.
Wonder what this does to beIN’s “B Team” now after Ray and Phil. More solo work for Andres (he’s done it before for some games and handled it well) or going to work in Gary Bailey or Rongen (both have done it before and I’d honestly prefer solo Andres over either)
Now we have Ray calling the Ligue 1 games with Neymar and Mbappe
Ligue 1 is the biggest winner from Serie A not renewing with beIN. Almost all their matches seem to be shown aside from PSG and the occasional match 6 hours after it’s over.
Have already noticed beIN has scaled back their Serie A highlights (only Juve Saturday and Inter Sunday). I can understand why, but hope it doesn’t continue as their Xtra show recapping the day’s action on the weekends is the best we have in America by far.
Dzeko’s amazing goal vs Torino was also ignored in the goals of the week….all Ligue 1, La Liga, and Turkey.
Serie A highlight show is on ESPN + as is a weekly preview show.
Yes I used to watch that and Total Italian Football when it was on beIN. I’m talking about highlights and analysis the day of the game, not midweek recap/preview shows.
ESPNFC (on ESPN+) has highlights and analysis of that day’s action (they post the show around 8:00pm ET I think).
Was never a fan of ESPNFC to be honest. They’d spend 20 minutes talking any PL club’s UCL match then just quickly gloss over everything else.
Saw online after the Napoli/Lazio match they were saying coming back to win from 1-0 down showed a change of mentality under Ancelotti….when I’m pretty sure they had the most points from a trailing positon under Sarri last year. Very superficial analysis.
Bonetti is a good analyst…. but he is no commentator… his nasal spoke is annoying and he talks wayyyyyy too much. World feed would have been a better choice and have these two do analysis pre-post game.
Cantona—-
Bonetti is the absolute best English language commentator for Serie A. He knows his stuff and has the perfect balance of excitement and insight. FOX blew it with most of their choices for World Cup commentators, but ESPN got this one absolutely right.
You obviously have not heard the world feed.. makes Bonnetti look like a baby
Cantona—-
This fetish you have for old English commentators is weird.
Winner for most ignorant comment of the day. congrats
Cantona—
Martin Tylers mumbling soothe you to sleep at night? Well you call yourself Cantona so maybe a Euro fetish not just English?
Really…That is your juvenile response? Cmon. Make it worth my while to respond.. get more creative please. I slapped down Oliver many times and your even half as eloquent as him.
Cantona—-
Matteo is good! I will enjoy these games, though I’m not a huge Serie A guy.
A commentator defection, losing Serie A, losing EFL, along with the news that Relevant Sports will own the La Liga rights after 2020, is just more of a sign that Bein’s days are numbered as a network. There just won’t be anything left for them to cover.
The one saving grace for Bein is that many of the other outlets don’t have weekend afternoon slots available for TV broadcasts like Bein does.
I know Mark Donaldson. He is a top notch commentator and I look forward to hearing him on these broadcasts
Are the world feed announcers onsite or somewhere in England? Same question for Donaldson & Bonetti.
Serie A world feed commentators (and Donaldson/Bonetti) are calling the game off the monitor.
Today during the Juve Game the world feed production was great, real top notch stuff, they used ESPN commentators, can’t remember one of the men’s names but the other was Stewart Robson and they provided excellent commentary. Serie A finally got themselves great presentation in the mainstream compared to the past !
Nope that was not Stewart Robson, it was Tony Dorigo.
Anyone know if it is possible to watch replay’s of Serie A matches on ESPN+? I couldn’t seem to find a way.
Nevermind, I found it under replays – all networks.
Bonetti may be knowledgeable but his commentary is overbearing. To me. this tends to be the trend when commentators call a match from a monitor instead of being at the stadium. Perhaps it’s the idea of being in sealed location and not being able to sense the ambient noise of a stadium to accent the pictures.
Still, it’s better to have these matches on ESPN+ and bouncing from the Dutch, Italian, USA leagues and a little German Cup match play, as well.
This will be the 4th weekend of ESPN’s Serie A coverage. For the 3rd time the match of the week is being relegated to ESPNews rather than ESPN or ESPN2. Only match not shown on ESPNews thus far was Juve v Lazio, seemingly confirming our fears they would mainly hype Ronaldo to the detriment of everyone else.
This week’s match of Empoli v Lazio can hardly be described as the best Serie A has to offer when there is Napoli v Fiorentina and even Juve v a surprising Sassuolo.
It would be understandable if Serie A was only getting bounced for College Football, but the match is Sunday and they are showing drone racing on ESPN2 during that time.
Also watched more ESPN than usual last couple weeks due to the US Open and the MNF double header, and didn’t see any promotion of Serie A.
We forget these are networks that are into ratings I think in the new sports TV environment networks like ESPN, FOX don’t have patience to grow already what should be established leagues with a sizable TV following like Bundesliga and Serie A in the US. It seems they’ve realized that they are better off just pushing that programming to backwater channels like ESPNNEWS, ESPN+, and FS2. For all the hype about Ronaldo heading to Serie A that game only got 211k EPSN2 is still in 85mil homes so you’d still expect the casuals to show up to see what all the hype was about. If that game had gotten at least 300k plus you’d probably had seen more games on ESPN2 or ESPN. There was a time that these networks would air these games but what happened was these games didn’t rate high enough and all that happened was the soccer market got over saturated and the numbers cannibalized each other.
The strategy has now shifted seemingly to US networks realizing their is only room for Liga MX, EPL, and MLS the broacast TV soccer pie for now is only so big and while leagues like Bundesliga,Serie A and to a lesser extent La Liga have die hard followers the numbers are just too small. Again I believe the networks see they risk market over-saturation with airing so many of these games on their main premium channels. The US soccer TV market is only so big. They see they are better suited to monetize by getting those diehards however small in numbers to pay $5-10 to watch their league. E
Took the time to break it down from the networks perspective I have been watching this play out. Many don’t understand what’s going on with soccer on TV there is a realignment occurring with free soccer on TV and soccer behind a paywall. The only non North American league that will be on TV prominently in the next few years will be EPL. The other foreign leagues will be on OTT pay per view basis. Big change from 10 yrs ago. We should all breath a sigh of relief that the US vs Mexico game on ESPN pull 800k plus. That result shows ESPN that the US WC fan hangover was just that a hangover and can rebound.
Difficult to build an audience when virtually zero promotion is done. EPL was popular prior to NBC, but it really took off after moving to NBC and their great promotional campaigns (Jason Sudeikis) and having many matches on free NBC.
Was in an out of the US v Mexico match this week so not 100% certain, but didn’t see any Serie A promo during the match. Same for some of the UEFA Nations League match I saw between Italy and Poland.
You make very good points but what I’m saying is ESPN has surveyed the landscape they aren’t looking to build a product they are already committed to doing that with MLS if they are going to air a product like Serie A prominently like you mentioned with NBC and EPL. With the changing at ESPN and John Skipper leaving this appears to be the new strategy. It’s like they said we’ll put this on ESPN2 and if there is a real hunger for Serie A they Ronaldo Debut will get 300-400k plus. After they saw the numbers it’s like they had the decision pre made to stick the games on ESPN NEWS and ESPN+.
That was my fear when the ESPN rumors getting Serie A starting to fly. Thought it would get lost in their sea of college sports and NFL pregame coverage on the weekends, not gain wider exposure as many of the pro ESPN people were saying. I recall when ESPN had the partial EPL rights with Fox Soccer and it was the same then, virtually no promotion.
However, it’s one thing for college football to take precedence over Serie A on ESPN and ESPN2, but drone racing (as the case this week) is insulting.
You are right about the Promotion and ESPN has gotten really cut throat with how they operate as a business picking and choosing what the projects that they are willing to spend money on. As a strictly business move get Serie A, FA Cup, Hyundai A League and Chinese Super League for just 55 mil per year is a awesome business move. In years past ESPN would have paid 2-3 times as much for the same product.
Who is the crabby complaining announcer who did Juventus- SPAL game Saturday 24 November?
Ha don’t know his name either, but answer to all the world’s problems is just to get the ball into the box according to him. How dare a team try to make a higher percentage play instead of blindly kicking it into the penalty area with 5 defenders waiting.
The commentators for the Juventus vs SPAL game on Saturday November 24th were Dan Roebuck & Gary Birtles.