rkolsen 1679 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 This may be a bit of a stupid / out of this world question. But I was wondering if in theory / possible for the 2018/2022 World Cup could NBC move or simulcast Telemundo's rights for Spanish coverage of the game to the main NBC network or NBCSN? The coverage would be broadcast in Spanish on the main audio feed but with English commentary on the SAP, secondary audio program, similar to the way they air Spanish play by play on the SAP channel for Sunday Night Football. Or is there anything in the rights contract that specifically states Telemundo's rights have to be broadcast in Spanish and Fox Sports' rights in English or does it have to air on that specific network? What I mean is that there have been previous rights transfers in the past like NBC giving up Ryder Cup broadcast rights to ESPN (which paid a fee) in order to get Al Michaels for Sunday Night Football. Also Univision has aired some of their games on their sister network UniMas. I thought of this because Telemundo only covers about 54.79% of the US through a network of 74 affiliates where many of which are on low powered stations or air on digital sub channels, according to RabbitEars.info, while NBC covers 95.78% of the United States. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WCAUTVNBC10 408 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 Nah. If Telemundo is the Spanish language rights holder then that's it. I'm sure FOX would throw a fit if NBC/NBCSN aired games even if it was in Spanish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrtraveler01 737 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 This may be a bit of a stupid / out of this world question. But I was wondering if in theory / possible for the 2018/2022 World Cup could NBC move or simulcast Telemundo's rights for Spanish coverage of the game to the main NBC network or NBCSN? The coverage would be broadcast in Spanish on the main audio feed but with English commentary on the SAP, secondary audio program, similar to the way they air Spanish play by play on the SAP channel for Sunday Night Football. Or is there anything in the rights contract that specifically states Telemundo's rights have to be broadcast in Spanish and Fox Sports' rights in English or does it have to air on that specific network? What I mean is that there have been previous rights transfers in the past like NBC giving up Ryder Cup broadcast rights to ESPN (which paid a fee) in order to get Al Michaels for Sunday Night Football. Also Univision has aired some of their games on their sister network UniMas. I thought of this because Telemundo only covers about 54.79% of the US through a network of 74 affiliates where many of which are on low powered stations or air on digital sub channels, according to RabbitEars.info, while NBC covers 95.78% of the United States. Found the press release from when the deal was made: http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/news/newsid=1530715/ It explicitly states that Telemundo has the Spanish-language rights. So that would close off any loophole like you're suggesting. But you raise a good point, this is going to be a downgrade for many Spanish-language viewers because Telemundo is on weaker signals in many markets even ones that have a large Spanish speaking audience. But I imagine Telemundo is going to do a lot to help close off the gap between them and Univision by 2018. The radio rights are a raw deal too because Fox Sports Radio's footprint is much smaller than ESPN Radio and on much weaker signals too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TennTV1983 756 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 Four years is plenty of time for NBCU to expand Telemundo's market reach if Comcast allows it, so that shouldn't be an issue unless FIFA were to decide last minute to yank the Spanish rights to air the World Cup away from Telemundo and give it to another broadcaster (MundoFox would not be an option since it has an even smaller reach than Telemundo, so it would have to be Univision in that case). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkolsen 1679 Posted July 2, 2014 Author Share Posted July 2, 2014 Four years is plenty of time for NBCU to expand Telemundo's market reach if Comcast allows it, so that shouldn't be an issue unless FIFA were to decide last minute to yank the Spanish rights to air the World Cup away from Telemundo and give it to another broadcaster (MundoFox would not be an option since it has an even smaller reach than Telemundo, so it would have to be Univision in that case). Univision only has a 55.26% reach or roughly 172 million people. UniMas is 46.76% or 146 million people. MundoFox has a coverage of 50.91% of the US or 159 million people. Thanks for answering the question. I also guess NBC could ask their affiliates to carry a national superstation feed of Telemundo on their digital sub channels in SD widescreen at 720x480 during the next round of affiliation agreements in secondary key markets, But even if it's a solely on Telemundo I wonder if NBC and NBCSN can take footage from the various Telemundo cameras (or even the clean feed putout by the host broadcaster) to get away from the time limitations that some networks like ESPN place on the amount of footage that can be broadcast per day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WCAUTVNBC10 408 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 But even if it's a solely on Telemundo I wonder if NBC and NBCSN can take footage from the various Telemundo cameras (or even the clean feed putout by the host broadcaster) to get away from the time limitations that some networks like ESPN place on the amount of footage that can be broadcast per day. You may be on to something there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundershock MN 169 Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 To the best of my knowledge the Spanish Language rights have always been a carve-out from the exclusive FIFA US rights deals. The Spanish Language rights holder gets only exclusive Spanish Language rights within the US. The "English Language" broadcaster gets exclusive rights within the US to everything except the Spanish Language rights. Check out the FIFA press release Mrtraveler01 posted above. There is nothing specific about English Language rights. Fox is the exclusive FIFA rights holder within the US to everything except the Spanish Language carve-out(s) from 2015-2022. Telemundo has exclusive Spanish Language rights (except radio) within the US from 2015-2022. The Spanish Language radio rights were awarded to Fútbol de Primera Radio...presumably because there isn't a Telemundo "radio network." ESPN has pointed out that they hold "Exclusive United States domestic rights (all languages except Spanish)" in their FIFA World Cup press releases. Over the years this has generally equaled English Language rights. But, in 2010 ESPN decided to have ESPN Deportes broadcast 40 FIFA World cup games live in Portuguese. They upped the ante this year with ESPN Deportes broadcasting 54 FIFA World Cup games live (ESPN Deportes+ carried the other 10 games) again in Portuguese surrounded by 600+ hours of Spanish Language "shoulder programming." And, ESPN3 is offering the games in multiple languages including Korean, English (ABC games only) and the aforementioned Portuguese. It's possible that NBCU could simulcast the games in Spanish on NBC. But, they couldn't offer an SAP English feed...or, any other language. Speaking again of ESPN they did exactly this simulcasting some games the World Baseball Classic in Spanish on the Mothership last year. So, it's not totally unheard of but, I think it's highly unlikely. I think a more likely scenario if NBCU is worried about coverage is that they simulcast the games on mun2. They have already gone down this road before with a US v. Mexico World Cup Qualifier in 2009...albeit in English. But, they could do the same thing and offer up a "free preview" of mun2 to providers. And, the game wouldn't be totally out of place on mun2 versus NBC. Slighly random sidebar. I can to wait to see how many people will be surprised to find out that if they want to watch Univision's Friday Night MLS slate next year in English they will need to due so via SAP. Univision, Fox and ESPN were all given exclusive rights to both English and Spanish for their packages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samantha 2878 Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 The Spanish Language radio rights were awarded to Fútbol de Primera Radio...presumably because there isn't a Telemundo "radio network." Our local Spanish sports AM (710 in Phoenix, which has an ESPN affiliation) is a member of this network. I should know, I've caught a bunch of the games of the World Cup on radio that way. Enough to know Ram trucks' Spanish slogan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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