SoccerBlogs

The US National Team plays a pair of important qualifiers over the next few days facing Jamaica in the rare international home and home. What makes the games an interesting business story is the television availability of the games in the United States. Recall that the last away US qualifier was only available via on demand.

At long last we know for sure that next Wednesday's U.S. Open Cup final between the Seattle Sounders and Sporting Kansas City will be nationally televised. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it will be available to everyone. In a bit of a surprise, GolTV has won the right to broadcast the Open Cup final.

Strange weekend for the middle of a Major League Soccer campaign. With World Cup qualifying and the Euro 2012 taking center stage, there was only one MLS match over the last couple of days. Perhaps the biggest soccer match in the United States over the weekend featured Argentina and Brazil in a much hyped friendly between the two South American powers.

Tuesday was the date for the annual meeting between Major League Soccer's defending champions and the President of the United States. The meeting always generates publicity for the league, but the 2012 version was even more high profile than usual. This visit included such big names as David Beckham and Landon Donovan.

Some quick thoughts before we get to the Major League Soccer attendance. First, I've started to see promotions for MLS during the NBC broadcasts of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. As previously noted, the hockey games draw huge eyeballs and regular promotions should drive some traffic to NBSCN telecasts of soccer.

We are on the road tonight, so here is a vault piece from the start of last season. This was part of our series that looked at the art of televising soccer.

The Major League Soccer 2011 season got started on Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast match carried by ESPN. Fans of all sports are frequently critical of the television presentation of sports events and soccer fans are no different.

The hunt for Arlo White's replacement ends with Kasey Keller announced as the analyst and Ross Fletcher (formerly of BBC Sport) hired as the new voice of Seattle Sounders FC. Oddly enough Fletcher lived just minutes away from White in the East Midlands. The transition back to a two-man booth will be smoothed by the presence of a man that Fletcher simply calls a "hero.

Before we delve into the MLS off season, here are some business notes from MLS Cup and the entire soccer weekend. We'll start with the MLS Cup overnight rating, which was reported by SBJ on Twitter as a .8. To put that number in perspective, the .8 is double the 2010 rating but slightly less than the 2009 rating.

In what comes as little surprise Grant Wahl reports that NBC Sports is pursuing Arlo White as their primary play-by-play man for their first season covering MLS and the United States national team. NBC isn't stupid and, like Sounders fans, feels that Arlo is one of the best voices in soccer right now.

According to a story that broke in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday evening, the Galaxy are set to announce a 10 year, $55 million deal with two new Time Warner Regional Sports networks to televise Galaxy games. The new networks (one in Spanish and the other in English) are fighting for content in the crowded LA Sports market and this deal guarantees live programming from March to October.

We are on the road tonight, so here is a vault piece from earlier in the season. This was part of our series that looked at the art of televising soccer.

The Major League Soccer 2011 season got started on Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast match carried by ESPN. Fans of all sports are frequently critical of the television presentation of sports events and soccer fans are no different.

Just a few quick hits from around the world of Fox Soccer. First, the television network has inked a deal with CONCACAF to serve as the television home of the Gold Cup and the Champions League for the next four years. At Fox's discretion, it can also stream the matches over its website. According to Soccer By Ives, the rights last thorough the 2015/16 event.

Photo by ISIphotos.comÂ

Sunday will mark a significant milestone in the progession of soccer in America.Â

When Fox airs the Arsenal-Manchester United match at 11 a.m., it will be the first live Premier League broadcast in the United States on network television.

The result, in the end, was something approaching an honorable draw, which both sides of this particular argument will now likely try to claim as a victory. The Premier League vs Karen Murphy had gone to the European Court of Justice to try and determine how the concept of a single European market weighs up against the country by country rights selling system which, amongst many, many others, the Premier League uses to sell coverage of its matches.

Fox Soccer is about to continue its ongoing coverage of the CONCACAF Champions League. The coverage takes on new meaning given the recent signing of the Versus/MLS deal and diminishing role Fox soccer has within MLS. Â As we said last Summer, Fox pours significant resources into televising an event that has yet to interest a significant portion of American Soccer Fans.

Big week and weekend of games in MLS, so we'll start right in with a look at attendance. Starting with the Monday game, more than 20k were in KC for the Galaxy and Sporting match. 16k came to PPL Park for the thrilling 4-4 draw with the Revs. The game was rescheduled from a couple of weeks ago when Hurricane Irene blitzed through the Northeast.

Less than two weeks until First Kick and the pace of preseason is starting to pick up. The various tournaments started up over the weekend with MLSSoccer.com offering high quality streaming of matches. Various team Twitter accounts used the matches as an opportunity to reach out to fans by providing updates and play-by-play of the games.

After reading Ginge's comments about Galavision in the previous post, I was resigned to thinking that the highlight package would also be in Spanish. Not that I don't like Spanish broadcasts of the Houston Dynamo, and as I wrote in the comments thread, listening to the Galavision guys on repeated references using the players' full names, like "Robert Alan Boswell," "Geoffrey Scott Cameron" and "Bradley Joseph Davis," was beyond awesome.

This weekend, the Houston Dynamo will open the 12th soccer specific facility in the league, BBVA Compass Stadium. In honor of the event, today's post will focus on the Dynamo. Before we get to the stadium, the team has just announced a new partner. The team's new official energy partner is Direct Energy.

In the wake of Dave's intellectual discussion from yesterday, here are a few mundane business notes. In an item from last week, the SBJ reported that Comcast Spectator and its Front Row Marketing subsidiary are promoting the French Trophee des Champions to Red Bull Arena to open the Ligue 1 2012/2013 season.

Martino will not call the game in a conventional sense. Instead, he will occupy a role "Between the Benches" during matches with White remaining in the broadcast booth. From this vantage point, Martino is expected to provide unique field level insight in addition to game analysis. NBC currently employs a similar technique during their hockey coverage, using an "Inside the Glass" analyst.

Women's Pro Soccer may not be failing, but it is in danger. Their sanction is in doubt as there are only five teams in the league for 2012. There is a lawsuit against WPS from a former team owner. While attendance was significantly up after the Women's World Cup there is an issue about revenue not being greater than costs.