Recently I wrote a column about how 2013/14 is a ground breaking year for "soccer" (for the purposes of my sanity it will be called football from here on out) in North America and beyond. NBC Sports signed a landmark deal to earn the rights to broadcast every single EPL game for the forseeable future, an admission that the game of football is slowly but surely developing the foothold it has on it the rest of the world in its last stubbornly untapped market.
Fox, never one to be left out of a bidding war, continued its ownership rights of the UEFA Champions League as well as secured the rights to the World Cup for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to be held in Russia and Qatar. They also have a brand new network to compete with ESPN in Fox Sports 1 (you might have heard of it, they stole Jay and Dan from TSN) that they have decided to dedicate an hourly "Fox Soccer Daily" show to during the week.
So what do these two networks that have decided to take the game into the direction that North America's most largely ignored demographic so desperately wants to see do after giving us unprecedented access to the game within our own walls? They do the exact thing that hasn't worked since the United States hosted the 1994 World Cup. Dumb it down.
The NBC embarrassingly promoted their EPL on NBC campaign with "A Football Coach in London" a viral skit from the very talented Jason Sudekis that placed an NFL coach in the managerial seat at Tottenham Hotspur. It was funny and reached a ton of eyeballs, but all goodwill in NBC playfully trying to associate the EPL with United States sporting culture was ruined when they released promotions leading up to the first weekend of the EPL season explaining that the league has "no playoffs" (shocker) and has things called "draws" that no one has quite heard of before (trying new things is cool!). All the campaign achieved was alienating the already existing fanbase NBC is inheriting from Fox Soccer Channel and ESPN, the only type of fanbase that considers early Saturday morning as prime time, also known as NBC's target demographic for 90% of their coverage that isn't going to be 11:00 am kickoffs between Manchester United and Manchester City.
It takes a special type of breed of sports fan to get up at 5:45 on a Saturday morning like I do every weekend to watch what are the afternoon games across the sport's best leagues, if the game is accessible on television, I watch it on TV, if it isn't I go to the widely available livestreams that easily place me in front of a German/English/French/Spanish broadcast off of my laptop. There aren't any traditional North American sports to broadcast at the hours that NBC and Fox plan to air their football coverage of the Champions League and the EPL, and they aren't many people that are going to plan their lives around doing so. So why make those people cringe with nonsensical talking points and trying to translate it to sports that it does not translate to?
NBC to their credit deviated from their promotional campaign with a surprisingly fluid and quality production to their first kick at the EPL can. They led in with the always stirring "You Will Never Walk Alone" chant at Anfield before Liverpool and Stoke kicked off the 2013/14 season at the bright and early time of 7:45 Eastern time. That quality coverage continued throughout the day as every minute of every game was available for the first time in the United States market. They transitioned well from the early match to the action packed mid afternoon starts to the Match of the Day between Manchester United with the poise of what you would see on the BBC, albeit some expected growing pains of a first time broadcast. In turn their ratings were up 67% from ESPN/Fox's EPL broadcasts.
Fox on the other hand continued with the standard "Americanization of the sport" on Fox Soccer Daily, which unfortunately debuted right during Manchester City taking on Newcastle during Monday afternoon. While a major match was taking place we were treated to delightful talking points like "USA or England: Who ya got?" and other preamble that is frankly disappointing from a network that is poised to host the sport's most important tournaments in the Champions League and the World Cup for the forseeable future.
These networks main difference maker will be their show hosts and production with the ability to carry the English language broadcast and announcers giving them only presentation to worry about. Fox and NBC should learn the lesson of the people who failed to get soccer to "catch on" in the United States. Those people all attempted to "Americanize" the sport, thinking about talking for the product instead of allowing the product to talk for itself. I fell in love with the beautiful game without an American voice talking to me and comparing everything to other sports. Now I understand the nuances and complex nature of a sport that holds an abundance of equally unique and important domestic leagues and is spoken in hundreds of languages. NBC/Fox should be finding a way to convey that, not ignore it.
