ESPN recently revealed what will be included as part of their April 12 launch of ESPN+ and there is cause to be concern

Among the highlights: the price of $49.99 per year, out-of-market MLS broadcasts, UEFA Nations League, the Championship, the EFL Cup and a World Cup show called The Last Train to Russia that will be exclusive to the OTT (over-the-top) service.

As great as this product seems, it reminds me of another $50 service launched in 2017.

Every Premier League match was available for free using your cable provider authentication in the NBC Sports App as of 2016. This included the incredibly entertaining Goal Rush broadcast. A year later, NBCSN decided to make this service worth $50 per season on top of your regular cable subscription.

With NBC Sports Gold, NBCSN pushed their broadcasts further into the Internet abyss, making less popular Premier League clubs even harder to find than before. This was long before the US Men’s National Team failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

Instead of making NBC Sports Gold’s Premier League Pass a service that included all games, it ended up being an in-between solution that no one asked for or wanted. NBCSN forced its subscribers to keep their cable/satellite subscription AND pay for the new subscription to have the option to watch all 380 matches. It was a loss for both cord-cutters and cable-subscribers.

ESPN+ will not feature many major live sports broadcasts; it will only feature 1 MLB and 1 NHL game per week. And there’s no mention of ESPN’s Monday Night Football or its two weekly NBA games. In short, this service will not help you cut the cord, but rather seeks to complement the expensive cable/satellite subscription you already have.

ESPN’s new offering has the same caveats

One of the biggest developments regarding ESPN+ is that the popular daily soccer news show ESPN FC has been removed from television and will only be available via ESPN+ from April 12 moving forward.

Further proof of the US’s lack of interest in soccer can be found in bars across the country. For example, last year I went to a bar in downtown Boston (a sports town in every sense). All the TV monitors in the bar were tuned to an obscure college football game. Except for two. When I asked the bartender to tune to NBCSN to watch the Premier League match, he commiserated with a buddy, laughed at me and said, “We are not a soccer bar.”

So there I was, stuck watching Battle of the Network Stars on the two TVs closest to me.

This bar thought so little of soccer that they preferred to subject themselves to C-list celebrities playing tug-of-war rather than watching Manchester United play.

That’s how ESPN+ feels to me. Just Bleacher Report Live, it’s a service that has combined a niche sport such as lacrosse with soccer, hoping that the hardcore soccer fans will pay for it. It’s not the price of the service that’s the issue. It’s the mere condescending attitude by ESPN, Turner Sports and NBC to put soccer games on a paid-subscription platform, reminding me of the days when most soccer games were only available via pay-per-view. Have things gotten any better since those days?

Want even more proof? Last week, FOX Sports relegated the broadcast of the UEFA Champions League match between Liverpool and Manchester City to FS2. This channel is available to an estimated 58 million households compared to FS1’s 83 million homes. It’s as if FOX Sports doesn’t care about their soccer viewers.

Now by ESPN following NBC’s example, interest in soccer will undoubtedly be further diminished. For soccer fans, the impact of the USMNT’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup will be felt for even longer than it should be.

It will be interesting to follow the ratings in the United States as the World Cup plays out. But as the big broadcasting companies continue to make it significantly more difficult to access the beautiful game, how can you miss something you never had?

After this last international break we witnessed another incident. French players were allegedly greeted with monkey chants during their friendly 3-1 win against 2018 World Cup host Russia. The friendly was being played at the Krestovsky Stadium in Saint Petersburg.

This should not be happening, but, then again, this is not news

There is a part of the Russian culture that has bred racism, especially in soccer. In the news report about one incident you will find a tidbit about another. Such as the recent disciplinary proceedings by UEFA against Zenit St. Petersburg.

This incident came a week before for racist chants during a 2018 Europa League match.  The opponent was RB Leipzig who they drew with, 1-1 at the Krestovsky Stadium.

I did not have to look beyond my own memory for another example. In the moments after reading these allegations I thought back to the manifesto written by Zenit ultras. Calling for their team to get rid of “non-Europeans and sexual minorities.”

Classifying the lack of black players as an “important tradition, which emphasizes the identity of the club.”

Zenit’s former Brazilian forward, Hulk, described the racism in Russia as an every day occurrence on the pitch. The abuse would come from supporters and referees. He would strangely backtrack these statements two years later after leaving the club.

Former Arsenal player Emmanuel Frimpong was sent off for his reaction to similar abuse. The fans of Spartak Moscow racially abused the player according to his comments to the media. He would later state, poignantly, in a series of tweets, the shame in holding a World Cup in Russia.

More recently in January there was the tweet from Spartak Moscow’s verified account. Which featured a video of some black players warming up. The quote accompanying the video stated, “See how the chocolates melt in the sun.”

With every tweet and every chant comes a new reminder

The fight against racism is not over. It may never be over and patches on the side of kits have not been enough.

While UEFA may be doing its part by investigating each allegation. Until countries take ownership of the change in their cultures, we will continue to talk about bananas and coins on a pitch. Rather than the tactics and the team selections.

And while the world is appalled when reading these allegations, come June the world will be watching intensely and waiting, anxiously, for the specter to rear its ugly head once again.