Channel Chat
Broadcast History
In the late 1970's the broadcasting of soccer on TV was practically non-existent. Soccer Made in Germany with Toby Charles was the only soccer show, Jim Karvellis was the voice of the Cosmos and the 1978 World Cup was on closed circuit.
Things improved in the early 1980's as ABC presented the 1982 World Cup and the 1984 European Championship was shown on Univision in Spanish. NBC showed the 1986 World Cup, however ABC has delivered the World Cup quadrennial tournament ever since. Fast forward to today and you can expect more soccer on the TV, for the period from now until the World Cup in South Africa in June 2010, than has ever been seen here before. Soccer on Broadband is growing, none more so than ESPN360 (soon to be distributed on Comcast), which we include along with Setanta and MLS broadband programing.
Soccer rights fees here in the States, although nowhere near the level of football, basketball and baseball, are growing. Univision and ESPN (ABC/Disney) reportedly paid FIFA some $425 million for World Cup events from 2007-2014, with the Spanish-language media company and the sports programmer spending $325 million and $100 million respectively.
