ESPN Lost Their Champions League Rights: How They Could Reclaim Them

Over the last fifteen years, the ESPN family of networks has covered the UEFA Champions League in the United States. In the 2008 final, they had over 1 million viewers watch Chelsea and Manchester United, which is the highest rating ever for ESPN for a Champions League match.

But last week, it was announced that FSN, Fox Soccer Channel, and FX would take over Champions League telecasts starting next season, which will severely hurt ESPN's reputation as "The worldwide leader in sports," as it will lose the most watched yearly competition in the world starting next season.

The reasons why the FOX network was able to get this deal is that Fox Soccer Channel (FSC), has been covering EPL games, Serie A games, the FA Cup, MLS, CONCACAF, and the UEFA Super Cup for the last several years, which has bolstered their reputation as a major soccer network.

They also have been trying to cover these games for years, as it will help enhance their reputation as the best soccer channel around. Also, they will broadcast the games in High Definition starting sometime in the beginning of 2009, something that ESPN never did.  They will also have more analysis than ESPN, and the competition will be the center of attention on everything that the network will do.

The FOX family of networks also will now be able to broadcast any of the 146 matches that they now have the rights to, and could play any one of these matches live during the Champions League, so the viewer probably will be able to watch the best possible game live. T

hey also will get broadcaster actually at the game (unlike ESPN, who had Derek Rae and Tommy Smyth announce all of the games, except the fina,l from ESPN headquarters in Bristol Connecticut.) Also, they will show the final on FX (which isn't a sports channel) and by doing this, they could get viewers that never have experienced international soccer, which will allow them to become fans of the game. Because of this, the FOX family of networks will gain more money, and more fans.

However, ESPN can still get the Champions League, plus much more, by buying out the nearly bankrupt Irish based Setanta Sports. If they could buy them out, they would gain both the Premier League and the Champions League, and it would cost them less because they got them together with the buyout, instead of buying each of them separately. By doing this, they could put Premier League on ESPN, along with the Champions League.

Finally, by losing the Champions League, ESPN could regain the right to the Champions League, along with the Premier League, and by 2012-2013, both of them could be on their family of networks, which could make this negative incident eventually become a positive.