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30Oct/120

Why NBC’s Purchase of EPL TV Rights Could Be Bad for US Soccer

The television broadcasting conglomerate NBC announced on Sunday that, beginning in 2013, they had acquired the domestic television rights to England's Barclay's Premier League (EPL) for the next three seasons. NBC Sports' deal with the EPL, worth an estimated $250 million, comes as a strong blow to rival cable television networks ESPN and Fox Soccer (FSC), who are the only two stations currently showing Premier League matches in the States. Fox Soccer in particular, has been steadily losing its television rights to several other premier European soccer leagues.If the network does not act quickly to stop this bleeding, it may soon find itself in the same zone of obsolescence as GolTV, the once proud owners of television rights to Spain's La Liga, who now only show German Bundesliga and a few less-popular South American matches. As a result, Rupert Murdoch's satellite television giant DirecTV dropped GolTV from their broadcast packages. Even with their extravagant financial offer, which was reportedly four times what any other network was willing to pay, NBC will feel confident that they can recoup expenses in a timely fashion, given soccer's increasing ...
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