USL PRO Will Feature Live Streaming for 2011 Season
The United Soccer Leagues USL PRO announced on Friday that they will live stream more than 100 games in this year’s 2011 season.
Live video streaming will be available at USL Live.com. USL announced that live game webcasts will complement USL PRO’s national broadcast television package, which will be announced in the coming days.
This is the fifth year of USL Live. Last year’s content featured short-form features when USL was still involved with division 2 with 3-teams involved with the league. The United States Soccer Federation ran division 2 in 2010 under the name USSF D2 Pro League and also controlled the live streaming of all league games. USL Live will return to its original concept of streaming live games for the 2011 season with 10 of 15 USL PRO clubs participating.
The first scheduled live game webcasts will take place next Saturday, April 9, as Orlando City and the Charleston Battery host their home openers for the 2011 USL PRO season. Several additional games will be seen on USL Live during the next two weekends as USL PRO Kickoff 2011 continues.
According to the press release, USL PRO clubs planning to stream their home games live in 2011 include Antigua Barracuda FC, the Charleston Battery, the Dayton Dutch Lions, the Harrisburg City Islanders, the LA Blues, Orlando City, Puerto Rico United, River Plate Puerto Rico, the Rochester Rhinos and the Wilmington Hammerheads. USL has equipped each team with broadcast-quality production kits to enable them to stream games.
“Expanding USL Live last year to include short-form content from all of our teams was extremely important,” USL Director of New Media Seth Witkowicz said. “Now, with the momentum generated by USL PRO, we are thrilled to offer fans more than 100 live games in 2011 while continuing to present new and dynamic feature content. We’ve had a tremendous response from the teams and fans, and we expect the entertainment value offered by USL Live to continue to grow.”
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Now it’s your turn, NASL. The opening kickoff is close at hand.
1/3 of the clubs are not participating? And I sure hope the camera doesn’t point anywhere near the stands in River Plate……sheesh…….. Gotta tip my cap to Antigua getting on board with this. Hopefully it isn’t one expense too many for them in the end.
the league (and likely UMBRO as a sponsor) is the one providing the equipment to the teams to make this happen. I understand that some of the stadiums might not have the capablity to do the level of streaming that the equipment requires hence the ten teams.
Combine this with the TV package they are announcing shortly, MLS and NASL, I’ll have pleanty of soccer to watch this summer!
Still very curious to see what this “tv package” is going to be. If 1/3 of the league isn’t even equipped to handle live streaming properly, how are they going to handle live tv coverage? This is one I’m still going to have to see to believe. I can’t for the life of me imagine why FSC or anyone else would want to televise D3 matches, for example, LA Blues vs. Puerto Rico United. If they do, then there should be nothing stopping Commissioner Downs from walking into FSC HQ and saying, if you are willing to televise that, then I’ve got a Strikers vs. Rowdies game you’re going to love, and which might actually get some kind of a rating in a national audience.
Strikers Return,
As has been posted here previously in both article and comment, those games are paid for by USL. With the old USL-1 it was paid for my league and team contributed some as well. I would guess this is the same situation. It is not at all the like the scenario that you speak of with David Downs demanding the same as USL.
David Downs did comment briefly on the TV situation with the It’s Called Football program with Ben Rycroft last week. I think as a TV exec. Downs totally understands the situation and stated that it’s more likely the league will deal with local TV contracts rather than national. That’s something I’ve said for a long time now. It’s more likely that a Fox Sports North would be interested in carrying a NSC Stars game than FSC would and more likely to get regional sponsors.
From what I have heard its going to be a 10 to 15 match deal, I imagine that includes playoff and the championship games.
I know the Battery has two matches scheduled for TV this year.
I havent heard but I imagine the deal is still the same as Brian explains, The league “pays” for the airtime, but the league and teams can make money off the advertisments sold for the matches. I dont know if they off-set one another or not but The Battery isnt really into pissing money down the drain and they step-up year after year for the deal so I imagine they think it works out for them.
Also I can’t speak for other markets but the Battery has had a local TV deal for about three or four years now. It is a local Spanish Channel and the home matches are shown a couple days after the live game. I dont know what the Battery get from that other than the local TV crew and producer handles all the technicial side and provides the bodies to work the cameras, etc. but it seems to be working.
@BQ – I understand about the league footing the bill for the tv deal. I’m totally shocked by it, but I get it. I was talking more in terms of the infrastructure that must be in place at the stadiums to pull off the live-streaming and tv coverage. Unless I’m misunderstanding, 1/3 of the league is not going to have the live-streaming because this is an issue for them. I assume that means those same teams will not be having any of their home games televised.
As for the tv situation itself, I’m just surprised that FSC would have any interest in televising any D3 games, even if the league is paying them some money to do it. It can’t be a whole heck of a lot of money, this is D3 after all. Which leads me to surmise that the NASL should be able to get a similar deal if they wanted to, which Downs should be able to facilitate if the league decided to go that route in the future. Ultimately I agree 100% that local/regional channels are the right way to go in the short term in looking at it from the individual team perspective. Sun Sports for example, already handles games for teams in both the South Florida and Tampa markets. To me they’d be an ideal choice for the Strikers and Rowdies. But that’s where Downs comes in I guess to try and get the league in a position for something like that to be closer to reality than fantasy.
when FSC does a broadcast, they bring an 18 wheeler with the uplink in the back and really dont use the stadium for anything else other than power. The truck is where the producer sits and does the switches and all the TV Cameras feed back to. Obviously its hard to get that to the PR and I believe that was a big issue with the stink in the finals a couple years ago when PR felt they should have hosted.
the last figure I heard was that it is about $10,000 for the broadcast. I imagine though the league will want to showcase the better stadiums like Rochester and Charleston (I saw where Charleston had two “TV” matches penciled in couple months ago and heard the same thing about two weeks ago)