ESPN has added to its football (soccer) rights in the US with a deal with Spanish-language broadcaster Univision to air home Mexican national team games in English, including World Cup qualifying matches.
ESPN has recently lost a number of premium football rights packages in the US and internationally, the Mexican package of rights marks a small fightback in an increasingly competitive rights markets for football in the US.
Starting this Wednesday with a friendly against Denmark, ESPN will take English-language rights across all platforms. Univision with broadcast the match in Spanish.
Both broadcasters will air Mexico’s World Cup Qualifying matches in their own languages and broadcasts could air on various networks run by ESPN and Univision.
They plan to work together on some coverage of the Mexican team. Both will carry 20 games, most notably the March 26 Mexico vs US match in Mexico City.
The deal for the Mexican national team is aimed at giving ESPN more exposure to the Hispanic audiences in the US who traditionally follow football as their main sports rather than the American sports.
“Univision Deportes is committed to expanding access to soccer properties in the U.S. across our platforms and with partnerships such as this one with ESPN,” said Juan Carlos Rodriguez, the president of Univision Deportes.
ESPN has rights to the US team’s home games, but the away games are held by new entrant into the US market beIN Sports which also has rights to Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, and France’s Ligue 1,
The 2014 World Cup marks the end of ESPN and Univision’s World Cup rights packages. Fox Sports and Telemundo will take over as the lead World Cup broadcasters in the US. ESPN also recently lost rights to the English Premier League to the NBC Sports Network. Telemundo and mun2 will have access to the games under a larger Comcast acquisition of the rights. ESPN also lost a package of Premier League rights in the UK.
ESPN has resolutely followed a policy of not overbidding for football rights in what it feels are price-inflated sales markets driven by hype rather than market reality. It is still committed to football globally, but at the right price.
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