Written by Stephen Wood at The Sports Quotient
If you clicked on this article, you probably don’t need to be told that the Premier League is taking American television by storm. NBC Sports’ EPL broadcasts have grown tremendously in popularity, often outdoing Major League Soccer. The question of whether or not a foreign league could find success in the U.S. has been answered. Now that we know that, which one is next?
Fox Sports thought it had the answer when it inked a huge deal with the Bundesliga ahead of this season. Seizing on the growing popularity of soccer in America, Fox Sports bet big on the German top division finding an audience stateside. Despite the Premier League’s dominance, UEFA ranks the Bundesliga ahead of the Premier League, and it has plenty of big names. In a country with a domestic league that is still years from Euro-quality play, it’s easy to imagine the Bundesliga would be welcomed with open arms.
So far, however, the ratings have been disappointing. Though it can now boast the most-watched Bundesliga broadcast in U.S. television history, Fox Sports has not had much success broadcasting Bundesliga games, many of which directly conflict with Premier League games on weekend mornings. It’s hard to grow an audience when the biggest soccer fans in the country already have something to watch in that time slot, but the alternative is broadcasting tape-delayed games at a later time, something far from ideal in a world of Twitter and easily-accessible illegal streaming sites.
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