Really, NBC?

Welcome to ASC: A Soccer Column (or, by its full name, Alexander Scott Campbell: A Soccer Column), a weekly column on an issue of the day in the world of soccer. In lieu of reporting on the Chicago Fire for MLSsoccer.com during this era of COVID, this blog will be my way of writing and choosing topics of interest to me and I hope you as well.

So before I get going on this, I want to start with some good news: NBC Sports Gold is dead. No more paying $60 for the season just for the 2 or 3 games your favorite team was pushed there for. The other good news is that, if you want to see absolutely every Premier League game, it will still only cost you the same $60 and there are way more games behind the paywall in question. But whatever portion of your cable bill was worth it to you for NBCSN? Well, that’s now worth much less. 

Welcome to Peacock, NBC’s new streaming service that is now home to a significant chunk of the Premier League’s games in English in the United States. Peacock will host 175 live EPL games this season, for an average of 4.6 per week. With some quick math, you’ll realize that’s just under half of all games. Again, this means much more theoretical bang for your buck but also means that even if you root for a big team, say Liverpool or Manchester United, about half your games will go behind the paywall. You might have been fine missing the 2 or 3 games on Gold, but now you’d be missing half the season.

A problem Peacock inherits from Gold is that it doesn’t include the games on TV. So, if you’re a chord cutter, you’d still need to have some other source for the games on NBC and NBCSN. 

On the one hand, I understand wanting to make more money. It’s pretty much a guarantee that a far greater number of people will register for Peacock than did for Gold. The thing is, the audience for the Premier League isn’t *that* big. There are fans like me who are going to pay because we are very invested, but trying to convince someone to pick and start following a team only for them to realize it will cost an extra $60 to make the experience worth it is a tougher sell, especially at a time when everyone’s wallets are a little tighter. This is a move that indicates no interest in expanding the existing audience.

That brings me to this weekend, and the biggest gripe I have here. Chelsea (whom I support) will play their first game of the season today (Monday) against Brighton on Peacock. Now, if half the games have to be behind the paywall then this in itself isn’t a huge deal.  But they will also be on Peacock next weekend against Liverpool, in what will be one of the highest profile games of the season.

This isn’t just about putting popular teams behind the paywall, this is about a complete mishandling of the most unique marketing opportunity in soccer right now for an American rightsholder: Christian Pulisic.

You could ask for no better set of circumstances to grow the audience of people who will watch the EPL here in the States (and thus create a larger potential audience to pay for your streaming service) than what Pulisic has created.

The most talented male soccer player the United States has ever produced is one of the most important players for one of the most popular teams in the most popular European league….and you’re not going to put him on TV? Why is he not playing every game on big NBC, with ads running during Stanley Cup and Sunday Night Football broadcasts?

If you advertise that an American superstar will be on TV every week playing for a club that even those who know next to nothing about soccer have heard of, you can go right after the sports fan who doesn’t watch soccer outside of World Cups (or maybe at all).

But instead, they’ve decided to do none of that and simply squeeze the existing modest fanbase for all they can.

One possible argument in NBC’s defense here is that their contract to broadcast the Premier League is up at the end of the 2021/22 season. If they know something we don’t and will no longer be the EPL’s home, then it makes complete business sense to get every dollar you can before you lose the rights.

But again, the idea of putting all your eggs in the Peacock basket doesn’t add up to me when you consider how niche the soccer audience is. The Premier League will not be the deciding factor of whether or not Peacock is a success. Furthermore, to a company the size of Comcast (congrats if you have Xfinity, you can get free access to Peacock Premium, although the linking process is a little convoluted) the amount of money we’re talking about here is not going to make much of a difference one way or another.

This sadly also parallels the larger American soccer culture of ‘pay to play.’ You don’t live near an MLS club but have the talent to potentially get a D1 soccer scholarship, or maybe even go beyond that? You family better have some money. You’ve decided you want to root for Chelsea because of Christian Pulisic, or Liverpool and their incredibly exciting brand of soccer, or follow Manchester United’s quest to reclaim their former glory? Well, you’ll need to pay extra for that. 

Live sports are more or less the only thing that traditional TV is good for these days, so use it! They’ve been given the choice of pissing off their existing fans for a trivial amount of money and likely shrinking their viewership as a result…..or using the opportunity of the first true American superstar in the men’s game falling at their feet to promote their product….and they’re choosing the former.

People who do not watch soccer are not going to pay money to watch Christian Pulisic, but if he’s on their TVs every Saturday or Sunday morning before the day’s American football action heats up….build it and they will come, just don’t shake them down on their way through the door.