The beautiful game
World Cup 2010: The Beautiful Game if you’ve got cable!
When U.S. over-the-air broadcasting went digital last June, I decided to forego cable and do as the pioneers did in the olden days…use an antenna. For about the cost of two months of cable, I was able to wire my house, install multiple jacks and receive more than 20 HD channels. The picture is amazing – better than basic cable, which doesn’t have to be HD.
Recently, I discovered an unexpected glitch – I can only watch 10 of the 64 matches for this year’s FIFA World Cup (that’s soccer). ABC is broadcasting a handful of games over the air, but the ABC/Disney/ESPN family has the U.S. English-broadcast rights (I will come back to that) and they have a clever scheme…show the remaining 54 games on ESPN and ESPN2 and also stream them online. Although anyone can go online to those sites, you can only watch video streaming matches if you have a cable TV. Even though I have cable internet, I don’t get access.
Contrast this to Britain, where the BBC is showing all the games. If you live in Britain, just go to the BBC (bbc.co.uk) and you can view it. We have no such option here. That’s a shame in a market (U.S.) where we are still trying to convince ourselves and the world that America is ready for soccer and deserves respect. Rabbit ears get no respect.
The 2006 World Cup was one of the most watched events in television history. It is estimated that 26.29 billion viewers tuned in over the course of the tournament. The final match alone attracted more than 715 million viewers. The Super Bowl is only estimated to draw approximately 100 million viewers (oh yeah, it is broadcast over-the-air).
The Olympics are more on par with the World Cup; 4.7 billion viewers worldwide tuned in to some of the television coverage in 2008. And while NBC produced only two hours of online streaming coverage for the 2006 Winter Games, they provided 2,200 hours of online coverage for the 2008 Summer Games.
If the United States wants to become a soccer powerhouse, expand the base of fans and raise the status of our professional league, then we should be shamelessly encouraging everyone to watch. For this, ABC/Disney/ESPN falls short. Maybe PBS should get English broadcast rights next time. For now I’m watching in Spanish on Univision. Goooooooooooool!
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