The Football Thread - 17/18 Season

[ArchangelMadzz]

Ka-pi96 said:

ArchangelMadzz said:

I take it you don't understand how expensive exclusive TV rights are.. 

BT is paying 400 million dollars every year for the exclusive british broadcasting rights of the Champions league and Europa league to the UK. Population of 65 million people. 

8.3% of Americans claim that 'Soccer' is their favourite sport. A newer list shows that it is the 5th most watched sport in the US. That also includes Premier League and all the other leagues as well. So 5th puts it on the same ranking as Speedway in the UK.

Speedway. 

I understand how expensive "exclusive" TV rights are (the $200m isn't really exclusive when Telemundo also paid $300m for the Spanish language rights in the US), but the fact that there's a lot more matches in the Champions League/Europa League than the World Cup is also an important factor. You're going to make more money and thus can afford to pay more if you've got more matches to show.

And 8.3% of Americans isn't a small number of people. And favourite sport doesn't really matter, people can have a different favourite sport but still like and watch football. And are you sure about Speedway being the 5th most popular sport in the UK? I would have thought Football, Cricket, Tennis, Rugby, F1, Golf & Horse Racing would all be more popular than that.

Only paying for the English is why it was that 'cheap'. Also during the world cup pretty much everyone in America watched the US team but they don't watch the MLS which is why 71k is so impressive. It's like that in quite a few countries that have a decent national side but dead leagues, not that the MLS is dead it's growing fast. 

Tennis is number 8 apparently, People mainly only care about tennis here when Wimbledon is on (they're missing out). But even on your list you're not getting those numbers at F1 evemts.