Americans have always had an interesting relationship with the game of soccer, and every World Cup that comes around their is a sliver of hope from ex-pats living in the US that Americans will adopt the sport. After all, everyone is an expert at that point. But NBC Sports attempted to make inroads in attracting the American sports fan last week on New Years Day with Premier League Breakaway.
If you’re like most American football fans, you’ve heard of the Red Zone Channel for Sunday NFL games. The channel is attractive if you are a fantasy football player or simply enjoy watching important scoring plays as opposed to commercials. Premier League Breakaway was an attempt at this for soccer. It aired eight Premier League matches that looked in to all the goals and shots on goal live switching from coverage of one to the next
Not all the feedback has been positive, however. One search on Twitter of Premier League Breakaway and you’ll get a number of people complaining about an announcer who gave too much away, to complaints of it looking too much like a highlight reel from Youtube. One common theme from the anti-Breakaway crowd was it missing the nuance of a Premier League match.
This was there first go at it, and they’ve already shown a willingness to tweak the program to appease its viewers. Because of the overwhelming negative response to the foreshadowing by the announcer, Rebecca Lowe, at halftime she switched to allowing the viewer to see what happens. One can imagine that they will adjust a few other things for their next matches.
What comes of the experiment we will see, but perhaps more interestingly, we will see if this converts the casual EPL fan to fandom. But the European fan is fundamentally different than the American fan, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out as well.
If you want to practice your kicking accuracy but need a break from the soccer field, then consider FootGolf for your next cross-training workout. FootGolf is a relatively new sport that started about five years ago in Europe, but has recently spread to over 260 golf courses throughout the country.
The New England Small College Athletic Conference, otherwise known as the NESCAC, has served as an authority on the sport since its formation in 1971. It now sponsors 26 conference championships, including thirteen for men and thirteen for women. It represents and includes some of the most popular New England teams for the sport, including Amherst College, Tufts University, Wesleyan University and Williams College. However, the Conference has often struggled with how to handle unruly fans. In 2011, it proposed a policy, which served to ask game officials to help monitor any unsportsmanlike conduct on the part of participating fans. If any such behavior was detected, the policy asked game officials to address the issue speedily and readily.
Soccer Commentators Score New Deal
Roger Bennett and Michael Davies are two British soccer analysts, known for their amusing and cheeky commentary on the sport. They made a name for themselves by producing a podcast on ESPN’s website Grantland; for their work on the podcast, they have earned a small, yet devoted following of fans. However, according to an article recently completed for The New York Times, the duo recently won a significant increase in attention, due to their work for the World Cup. For the event, they created nightly reports from a tiny room on ESPN’s beachfront set in Rio de Janerio, in which they employed their whimsical and self-deprecating tones to create amusing and compelling storylines. Through these broadcasts, they have been propelled into the media mainstream in sports.
As a result, the pair will host their own show on NBC Sports on Monday nights, which is scheduled to start shortly after the Barclays Premier League season begins. The pair will be covering the league’s progress as a means of NBC attempting to pull on the increasing popularity of the sport in the United States. NBC covered the league for the first time last year, resulting in the most successful run for the event for American audiences; the Nielson company estimates that thirty one million Americans tuned into the league, which doubled the figure from the previous year. NBC’s choice to bring in Davies and Bennett indicates that they believe the sport is not only growing more popular, but the creative interpretations of the duo as well. As a result, the pair has also been assigned the task of writing and producing online videos for NBC sports.
Davies, who has served previously as a television executive known for producing such shows as Wife Swap and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, declared that he was very excited to join NBC’s sports division. This excitement is particularly rooted in joining the corporation that brought about some of his favorite television shows as a teenager, such as ALF, The A-Team and Miami Vice.