The three-year media rights agreement announced between Major League Soccer and the NBC Sports Group is an important deal for both the sport and the sports broadcasting landscape in America. For MLS, the move to NBC in 2012 reinforces what U.S. all-time leading scorer Landon Donovan said Tuesday in Philadelphia, that American soccer is at a tipping point. The NBC Sports Network, as it will be called in January when it loses the Versus moniker, has nearly double the homes (76 million) of previous television partner Fox Soccer (39 million) for showing 38 regular-season games, three playoff games and two U.S. men’s national team matches. Another six matches (two regular-season, two in the playoffs and two U.S. national team contests) will be shown on NBC itself.
It’s the most English-language coverage the league has had since 2002, when four MLS games were broadcast on ABC. (Keep in mind, Soccer United Marketing is the both the marketing arm of MLS and the owner of all media rights for U.S. Soccer. If a network wants the national team — just look at the ratings for the World Cup — it has to pay for MLS games, too.)
With the addition of MLS, NBC has made a significant and much-needed addition to its stable of programming in its bid to become a major sports outlet under the Comcast umbrella that competes alongside ESPN. All it took was $10 million a year, according to Sports Business Journal.
There’s no guarantee just yet that NBC will do for MLS what it has done for the NHL. But its track record isn’t too shabby, and there was no chance at all if MLS continued with Fox Soccer.
– Craig Stouffer
