Strikers Ink Local Broadcast Deal
The Fort Lauderdale Strikers announced Tuesday that the club has entered an agreement with local CW affiliate SFL-TV to broadcast all home and away matches in HD, beginning with August 2nd’s matchup against the New York Cosmos. According to the announcement, the deal does not impact the existing agreement to stream matches via ESPN3, though Wednesday games televised nationally via One World Sports will be blacked out. Each broadcast will feature Bruce Silverman on play-by-play and Ed Boreth in color commentary, will include a seven-minute pregame show, and will be called “Strikers Fútbol Live.”
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Great news, I think this means every nasl team now has a local TV deal.
We were talking about that. I thought there was one other team that is missing a local deal…I talked about it with Neal Malone earlier this month. Can’t remember for the life of me what that last team was, though.
Could be wrong, but this is what I found during a quick search.
– MU – KSTC-45
– SAS – KSAT-MeTV 12.2
– Armada – CW 17
– TBR – Great 38
– Fury – Rogers TV
– Indy – WISH TV
– RailHawks – WRAL2
– NYC – 1WS
– Eddies – City TV
– ASFC – Atlanta 34
And now the Strikers. Looks like everyone is being televised in their markets now, not sure but I hope this is correct.
Maybe that’s the rub. New York has One World Sports, but can the townies and the locals get it without having OWS on their cable/satellite package? In other words New York has a TV deal, but is it truly local?
Not directing this at you because others have said this as well. However, I love how people bend over backwards to rationalize any dumb thing mls (stadium issues, taking little kids academies’ money, not as popular as Liga MX in the U.S.!) tells them but crucify anything NASL does/NASL teams do despite the league’s real world limitations. Let’s have some perspective, seriously.
I am not familiar with any “minor” league teams ever being on NY metro area TV broadcasts. Like ever. So even with the Cosmos brand they were never getting on the local broadcast channels at this early point in their return. Also, and very importantly, don’t forget this is NYC. No offense to other cities, but the metrics of NYC are different and NYC channels aren’t in need of programming content in the same manner other stations in smaller markets might be looking for content. So that just leaves local sports cable networks and the only ones I’m familiar with are MSG and YES. MSG already seems to have NJRB, and YES is the Yankees/ManCityNY station. So what’s left? This is the point, people just constantly attack without giving alternatives – there still hasn’t been a decent alternative, I have heard, to OWS.
But check the flip side, OWS is on 30 million homes and pretty much completely blankets everywhere from Pennsylvania to NE and instead of lauding this availability people find something to criticize. And online it can be seen nationwide, we even have a Cosmos fan watching in Hawaii and around the world – so for those looking for it, it is available. And I said this in another comment that I don’t remember you responding to, but it must be assumed people are watching OWS Cosmos’ broadcasts because that relationship has increased since its inception – to the point OWS is showing repeats of Cosmos games regularly. How is this not a major talking point? As for OWS being more readily available, I have no idea but you have to think the station is trying to get on more cable providers for its own good.
So, really, what’s the better alternative to OWS? Not being facetious, really interested in hearing a better alternative.
Incidentally, heard on This is Cosmos Country podcast the NASL lawsuit versus OKC USL is now in arbitration, but I didn’t catch any details. That’s interesting.
In what manner did I say anything derogatory about the TV situation in New York? I didn’t suggest it was bad, didn’t suggest a better alternative, none of it. I only said it wasn’t local, trying to clarify our above question about whether each team had a local TV deal. And I was right, it isn’t local. The pros and cons of all that can be debated by people more knowledgeable about it than myself. I was just checking the boxes on our prior conversation.
Sorry man, I literally said “not directing this at you.” It’s in the first sentence of the post. Again, sorry, but it wasn’t an attack on you or what you said. But I can express my frustration amongst friends can’t I?
Although you were just stating a point of semantics – as it seems to me – it is one of the criticisms of the OWS deal that is out there which seems terribly short sighted. Those knocking a team not on “local” TV when they’re on “national” TV, it is like being upset with a midfielder for having no assists in a game when he scores a hat trick.
Anyway, kudos to the Strikers’ front office.