NBC Wins Rights To Broadcast EPL In America

NBC has won the American Broadcasting rights to English Primer Legaue games starting in 2013.  I absolutely love this move from NBC.  Selfishly I am slightly concerned that the number of games I will be able to watch will go down with the loss of ESPN 3 streaming, but this is a great move for NBC to eventually compete with the four letter network. 

NBC currently shares rights to air MLS games.  The MLS is comparable to NBC in that it is much less established than other foreign soccer leagues.  The MLS will only be popular when they can make enough revenue to pay the elite players as much as they can in other leagues.  The MLS is lightyears away from a matchup that is comparable with Chelsea v Man U.  While there are sure to viewers who are just lovers of the game and willing to watch anything most people will want to watch the best product out there.  There is a very good chance that in the next ten years American popularity of leagues such as the EPL grow at a larger rate than the other major sports simply because there is so much more room to grow. 

Lets face it, ESPN has loyal viewers in fans of the NBA, MLB, NFL and College Football.  No matter how much money NBC pays to get a piece of those pies the majority of viewers will go to ESPN for coverage regardless because ESPN is a more established brand.  However, the NHL and EPL both have growing popularity.  These growing fan bases really don’t have a place to go for coverage and starting next year their best option will be NBC.  If NBC can establish a good base of viewers from hockey and soccer fans they can eventually expand to the other major sports and take a serious swing at ESPN.  At the very least it will keep ESPN honest and make the cut the “when was the last time Lebron took a shit” talk and produce more quality shows like the 30 for 30 documentaries.