It is all a bit of a mystery. Americans probably fly more flags and speak of patriotism more than any other nation in the world. Yet they are indifferent to their national sports teams, which have become very bad, in part, because of that apathy.And, of course, soccer is still a very minor sport when it comes to television coverage. How minor? The television rights for the World Cup are pretty inexpensive, as these things go.
. . .Americans don't seem to care very much, for now. Sometimes, the whole concept of a national team seems as foreign to them as nationalized health care, or guaranteed college tuition.
Eventually, ESPN agreed to pay $100 million, and Univision successfully bid $325 million to retain the Spanish-language rights. The combined $333 million offer by NBC Universal and Telemundo –— initially accepted by FIFA, then put into suspended animation to field more offers –— was geared largely to benefit Telemundo; because of soccer's popularity in Spanish-speaking communities, Univision's ratings have dwarfed ABC's and ESPN's.Yup, the Spanish language television station's ratings have "dwarfed" those of ESPN and ABC. Something to think about there.
ABC paid only $100m for the rights to the World Cup. By way of a comparison, NBC paid $1.1bn for the rights to the 2012 summer Olympics, which goes some way to explaining why FIFA does all it can to grow the game in the US.
