Fox Soccer Plus, scheduled to debut on March 1, has released TV schedules for the first three weeks of its programming, giving soccer fans a glimpse of what they can expect on the new soccer network.
Fox Soccer Plus will show two live Premier League games each weekend as well as two on delay in addition to live games during mid-week. Not surprisingly, the schedule of Premier League TV games is very similar to the Setanta US schedule. On Saturdays, Fox Soccer Plus will show one of the live 10am ET games as well as two Premier League games on delay during the mid-to-late afternoon. On Sundays, Fox Soccer Plus will show the early 8:30am ET kickoff.
Outside of the Premier League, Fox Soccer Plus will show a live Serie A game each week at Noon ET as well as a Coca-Cola Championship game on some Saturdays at 2pm ET.
Elsewhere during the week, the 24/7 programming schedule features reruns of Premier League, Serie A, Champions League, Argentine league, Fox Soccer Report and Sky Sports News, as well as additional soccer shows. When available, rugby matches will be shown as will live FA Cup matches (and reruns).
One noticeable difference between the programming schedules of Fox Soccer Plus and Fox Soccer Channel is not that FSC+ will not show any infomercials. Fox Soccer Channel typically shows five hours of infomercials from 6am-11am ET on weekdays. The lack of infomercials on Fox Soccer Plus comes at a price though as the channel will be available as a premium service (expected to be $14.95 per month).
The big two questions remaining about Fox Soccer Plus will be which TV providers will carry the channel and what Fox is planning on doing with the online rights to the games shown on Fox Soccer Plus. After correspondence with DirecTV, it looks likely that Fox Soccer Plus will be availabel on the satellite provider beginning March 1. But as far as the online rights are considered, it’s quite possible that those games will only be available on television instead of the Internet for the rest of the season.
That’ll upset a lot of soccer fans especially when you consider that several big matches will only be available on Fox Soccer Plus during the first few weeks of its programming including Chelsea versus Manchester City or Stoke in the FA Cup on March 7, Manchester United versus Fulham on March 14 and, most important of all, Manchester United versus Liverpool on March 21.
View the latest updated US TV schedule for games featuring Premier League teams, which includes Fox Soccer Plus-related listings.
