Monday, December 10, 2007

ESPN Looking into EPL TV Rights!

Don't get your hopes up as the rights aren't really open-for-bids until 2009, but still - pretty exciting.

All this apparently, because George Bodenheimer and the rest of ESPN are "bullish" on the prospects of soccer in America.

Read here!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You do realize that this is British broadcast rights for the Prem, right? This isn't ESPN bringing soccer to the US, it's about bringing ESPN's special brand of "magic" to the Brits.

Martin Hajovsky said...

It is indeed for the British rights. But for that much money Disney will undoubtedly bring more of the EPL into the American market. It's one more piece of the puzzle that brings world football to the mainstream media in the US. If ESPN can get market share from this and show that to advertisers, this raises all teh boats.

Who should be worried about this is Rupert and FSC. If you take the EPL away from FSC, or make them only show EPL highlights after ESPN has them, FSC is in big trouble.

Fun to think about high level media competition for footy TV.

Unknown said...

Great. Force feeding Dave O'Brien and Eric Wynalda to the Brits!!!