The game start times in Europe especially if ESPN 2 goes after the 7:30am and 10am games on Saturday's and the games on Sunday Mornings and Monday afternoon don't go head to head against baseball and football here in the States. ESPN broadcasts baseball on Sunday Nights with a game of the week and their college football and basketball coverage doesn't start till noon Eastern on the weekend. I don't see ESPN having any interest in the noon Saturday Game because there are so many college football games and basketball games going on from September to March. The 11am game on Sunday might be an issue but most of the time ESPN 2 shows oddball sports like bowling and Janet the Spider Lee playing pool on Sunday afternoons.

One rumor that I have read that I would love to be confirmed or denied is that when ESPN signed deals with the different cable companies across America a rider was put in that ESPN Classic could only show 10 hours of live sporting events a week protecting Comcast and other local cable companies that also have sports networks that they own and operate from having to compete with more ESPN live sports programming. I have read on forums the idea of ditching the ESPN Classic idea and turning the network to ESPN 3 but that would be severely hampered if they could only show 10 hours of live programming a week.

One thing to think about when pondering if ESPN 2 were to make a move for the Premiership Rights is would they move their hunting, fishing, outdoors, and fitness shows that do really well in terms of selling commercials/advertisements to an ESPN Classic which doesn't get as many eyeballs when ESPN can't make as much money with the Premiership because the cost of the rights and lack of commercials built into the game on the weekends.. As much as I could care less about those hunting, fishing, outdoors, and fitness shows they do make money for ESPN because companies in those industries buy up time during those shows to hawk their wares and would they be willing to do so on an ESPN Classic which has moved to digital cable from basic cable the past couple of years since ESPN 2 is on most basic cable systems.

I would really love to know if it is true that ESPN Classic is limited in how much live content they can show on ESPN Classic because I could see the people at ESPN rather putting soccer on ESPN Classic than ESPN 2 just because of the lack of money making opportunities there is in selling soccer here in the states without the commercial time to work with since ESPN 2 is in more homes and the network can make more money selling Bows, fishing lures, and workout videos than they would with the limited amount of c ommercial time available during an Premiership game.

Just smething to chew on!

What happens to MLS? Does ESPN ditch it because they have the big boys now, will people see the big boys and dismiss the MLS as a weak sister, or will more mainstream generate enough interest that people want to keep watching football year-round?

I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic on this one.

SB