On the Eve of the new Season...

godsshoeshine wrote:what are your thoughts on the tevez to shitty rumors? this could affect my prem watching next year

Like all moves, it depends on the price.  I know United were working behind the scenes to convince Tevez to leave Joorabchian, and I think that failed.  Anything short of that and I think he leaves so I hope shitty overpay for him.

I nearly forgot about this….

WORLD CUP QUALIFYING

Wednesday, June 3

10:00PM Costa Rica v United States (ESPN)

vansmack wrote:
I nearly forgot about this….

I wish I had forgotten about that.  Worst performance in years….

I've cancelled Setanta for the summer so I'm not posting the wide array of matches on TV this weekend.  There are no good games on FSC so go to the bar to see the good games, if there are any.

WORLD CUP QUALIFIER

Saturday, June 6

6:30PM United States vs Honduras (ESPN)

This really is the break ESPN has been waiting for…..


Sports Broadcaster Setanta on the Brink
By Ainsley Thomson

LONDON – The board of privately held Setanta Sports Holdings Ltd. will hold an emergency meeting Monday amid press reports the sports broadcaster could file for insolvency as early as this week, people familiar with the matter said.

Financial-services firm Deloitte is set to step in as administrator unless the company can come up with a rescue plan, the people said.

The meeting comes after Setanta failed to make a £3 million ($4.8 million) payment to the Scottish Premier League for its soccer broadcast rights, due Monday.

Adding to the pressure on Setanta is a looming payment to England's Premier League of around £30 million due early next week.

Setanta declined to comment.

Setanta has been in discussions with its main investors – Goldman Sachs, venture capital fund Balderton Capital, private-equity firm Doughty Hanson and hedge fund Montrica – for the past six months to try to secure funding. A board meeting last Saturday reportedly have failed to secure a rescue deal.

The Dublin-based company paid £392 million for two of the six packages of Premiership, now the Premier League, broadcast rights.

However, in February the company only managed to secure one package for 2010 to 2013, while rival British Sky Broadcasting PLC got the others, casting doubt over Setanta's future.

News Corp, owner of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, holds a roughly 39% stake in BSkyB.

i kept setanta for the weekend to watch ireland/bulgaria but i was too exhausted from 4 days straight days of double digit drinking to watch it yesterday. do they have espn in the uk?

godsshoeshine wrote:
do they have espn in the uk?

They have ESPN Classic, which I predicted would be come ESPN 3 for soccer, and ESPN America, however ESPN America focuses on US sports.  ESPN America took over a channel formerly owned by…..Setanta.

And for the record, I don't know if they'll want the one UK package Setanta held on to, but I have no doubt that they will want the US rights to the Premiership.

ESPN Classic is already being moved off the free tiers of cable and satellite packaes for ESPNU and will be moved to the Sports Pack type tier.  That will be increased revenue, probably enough to pay for the EPL.  It really could mean no extra subscription fee for Setanta next season and both FSC and ESPN3/Soccer as part of the sports pack for one price.  That would be sweet.

Hey, I have a (stupid, I know) soccer question. With that UEFA club championship thing, does only one team (the champion) from each league get into it or are their more than one from each? Also, is it only for each country's premier league or do the smaller leagues get to send their champions/teams too?

in a nut shell, the better the league the more teams they send. england, spain and italy get 4 and it goes down from there

godsshoeshine wrote:
in a nut shell, the better the league the more teams they send. england, spain and italy get 4 and it goes down from there

But in each country aren't their multiple leagues or levels that teams can be promoted or demoted to? Is England's (for example) 4 teams the four best teams from whatever-the-English-Premier-League-is-called or is like the champions of the 4 best leagues in England or some combination of the two?

i'm sorry, its each country's top league. when you win the lower leagues, your reward is moving up the domestic system. once your in the top flight, its going to the champions league

godsshoeshine wrote:
i'm sorry, its each country's top league. when you win the lower leagues, your reward is moving up the domestic system. once your in the top flight, its going to the champions league

Gotcha.

Another question: are their fail-safes in place to stop a huge powerhouse team like Man U or Real Madrid (you know, the teams Americans have heard of!) from falling out of the top leagues? If not, has that ever happened? I know if the Dallas Cowboys or Detroit Red Wings had a bad year in their sport and we had that kinda system that it would cause all sorts of financial reprocussions to the leagues. Has that sort of thing occured before?

I'm going to use this example as I think the wound is too soft for Godsshoeshine…

Leeds United

Short answer is no.  If you finish in the bottom 3, you go down, regardless of your reputation and past history.

And the leagues themself don't run into some sort of insolvency issue if an AC Milan or Man U spends 2-3 years in a lower division? That would cripple some American sports.

I must say I do like the idea, especially because it makes late-season games between basement-dwellers all the more exciting and no one can tank for a top draft pick, I just don't see how it wouldn't cripple a league at some point. Heck, if they did it with the NHL and Colorado, the Isles, and Toronto got replaced – even if only for one year – by Hershey, Manitoba, and Houston, heck, the league would be screwed. The salary cap would plummet.

Julian, wrote:
And the leagues themself don't run into some sort of insolvency issue if an AC Milan or Man U spends 2-3 years in a lower division? That would cripple some American sports.

the leagues in the biggest countries are bigger than the individual teams. but the teams themselves have varying financial issues. not getting into the champions league even one year could cripple liverpool so much that hicks and gillette would have to sell

The other part of the problem is how US sports use their minor league teams.  That doesn't exist in soccer.  Reserve squads play in reserve squad leagues, not in the lower divisions.  Players are "loaned" out to lower division squads to gain experience, however once a player is loaned out, you are forbidden from pulling him back to your squad until his loan term is up, so you best 20-25 players are playing in the reserve team or at the top club, not in some minor league affiliate.

The only teams that could come up in baseball and hockey, are owned by top flight teams, so it would be a drastic change.

The NBA only just now has a D-League (development league) and there is no minor leagues for the NFL.

It would be a drastic change in how things work and there's no way the owners or the unions would support it. 

plus no one would have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for a franchise fee if relegation was in the cards

It's fair to point out that I have always dreamed of setting this up for a fantasy baseball league, but even then I was totally perplexed as to how to do team valuations.

I was thinking maybe $150 to play in the top flight (with higher payouts), $100 to play in the second division and $50 to play in the third division.  21 team league (seven in each division), 23 man rosters, every stat counts but the big hangup has been how to value players.  In soccer, you progress by finding one gem and selling him for enough money to make your team better at 3 or 4 positions. That's more difficult when you have to trade, unless we can somehow do team valuations….

The Kaka to Real deal is supposedly done for ?65 Million.

I guess that would make Ronaldo safe at United.