The CBC has secured broadcast rights to Toronto FC, Canada’s first Major League Soccer club, for the 2007 season. CBC Television will broadcast a package of 14 regular-season Toronto FC games this year, including the expansion franchise’s home opener on April 28 against the Kansas City Wizards.
The agreement also provides CBC with the exclusive Canadian broadcast rights to the 2007 MLS playoffs and MLS Cup, as well as the 2007 MLS all-star game on July 19. In addition, CBC will provide live and on-demand video streaming of all Toronto FC game broadcasts on the network in 2007, in addition to Toronto FC and MLS highlights.
CBC Country Canada will provide encore presentations of all 14 matchups broadcast by CBC Television. The agreement includes an option for CBC to broadcast additional games in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Photo: Chivas USA defenceman Lawson Vaughn, left, misses his kick, leaving Toronto’s Alecko Eskandarian open to take a shot during FC’s debut game last Saturday. (Mark Avery/Associated Press)
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[...] Jim Duncan wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe CBC has secured broadcast rights to Toronto FC, Canada’s first Major League Soccer club, for the 2007 season. CBC Television will broadcast a package of 14 regular-season Toronto FC games this year, including the expansion … [...]
[...] CBC wins major-league <b>soccer</b> rights [...]
Any word on who’s doing the play-by-play?
Will the FC Toronto games also be simulcast in French on Radio-Canada? And I hear that Radio-Canada’s also negotiating to bring back “La Soiree du Hockey” back to its network.
This is very strange. Is there something more to this announcement? MLS currently has one team in Canada, so it’s not likely to generate a national audience in Canada. The CBC learned this lesson with the Blue Jays, didn’t they? My understanding is that that lesson ended up with the CBC having to subsidise the broadcasting of a regional team to a national audience because they couldn’t generate enough money from advertising to pay from something that was only ever of significant interest to a regional audience. It also appears that Rogers will also be broadcasting these games, so what exactly is the CBC trying to do by acquiring the rights to broadcast these games again? I’m not following the thinking here.
Will the broadcasts be in HD?
That’s going to be cool.
I’m not a huge soccer (football) fan, but enjoy watching the English Premiership games on TSN (I think) on Saturday mornings.
I think I can get into NA soccer if it’s that fast and creative.