John H

On Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Speed has the English premier Soccer League listed. Does this mean that English soccer is more popular in the US than the ALMS racing series? I mean, if soccer can bump ALMS on a "racing" channel, I don't want to live here anymore. I am hoping whoever inputs the info into the guide was high and this is all a big typo.

teamking

Where else would you live? You do realize that soccer is the world's most popular sport.

And though I assume your guide was mistaken, I will assure you that English soccer is more popular in the US than ALMS. Walk through any elementary school and you will see a dozen kids wearing English Premier League player jerseys. Probably as many as NASCAR, at least in some localities.

Nizer

Yes (fixed it for you).

In fairness, this weekend NascarTV is showing F1 practice, qualifying, and race; GP2 race; Continential Tire Challenge; and V8 Supercars.

ESPN2 is showing the ALMS race at 5pm on Sunday. All bets are off on quality of coverage....

blake

Apparently SPEED is now looking beyond MOTORSPORTS..... Is Segway Futbol the bridge?

High, definitely high...

NaroEscape

kinda like MTV not showing Music videos....Speed will slowly move away from racing and be just another sports channel...They already have more 'reality TV' shows than racing.

At least Speed does have F1, Grand Am and Conti, and the handful of V8 Supercars...all is not completely hopeless.

GuyIncognito

yep, they've already done some UFC stuff as well.

kind of like there's not much History on the History Channel anymore, and I haven't learned anything from the Learning Channel in years....

DrJupeman

Although I don't like soccer on Speed, yes, soccer is more popular than ALMS in the US. There is going to be a ****load of soccer on lots of channels this weekend as various leagues wrap up their seasons, cups are being played for, etc.

(Go Bayern!)

paradisenb

Yes, futbol is more popular than ALMS, but Speed not showing the race has nothing to do with popularity - is about contracts. ALMS screwed the pooch a couple of years ago by signing a multi-year contract with ESPN #somethingorother that lots of people don't get.

pontifex4

If you move to Canada, you can watch it streaming on ALMS.com. Of course, you'll also have to contend with prehistoric bandwidth limits from our internet providers...

993Guy

You can watch the ALMS races via live stream on espn3.com if your internet provider has access to it. Qualifying on Friday, race on Saturday are both listed as available for live stream.

Nick Wong

I thought Speed was in bed with NASCAR hence all the Grand Am coverage. If ALMS signed with Disney/ABC/ESPN it was probably due to circumstances beyond their control. At least, I would hope that were the case...

stuttgart46

Scott Atherton should be spanked for letting this happen. Unless ESPN creates a motorsports based channel, things will not get better.

John H

I would agree that English Premier Soccer is probably more popular in areas of the country other than Appalachia. In 1989 (?) I was in Europe "studying abroad" during the world cup and I must say, it was fun to be in the bars/pubs during the matches. I haven't watched much since because I personally don't have the time plus my alcohol consumption has dropped off considerably over the last few years.

I guess I just wonder

(1). how English Premier Soccer can afford to pay more than ALMS to be on a channel that has nothing to do with soccer. I could see if it were a Fox Sports or something.
(2). why English Premier League would even want to be on Speed unless it was free or damn close. What incentive could there be? It would like the Craftsman Truck Series showing their races on the Home Shopping Network. ALMS should have an incentive to be on an motorsports channel.

I am sure I don't have a clue about the goings on at Speed or ALMS. It just seems odd to me.

NaroEscape

I can kinda explain the no ALMS on SPEED thing: Grand Am considers ALMS it's competitor (understandably). Grand Am is owned by Nascar. Nascar told SPEED that they did not want ALMS broadcast or they would pull their stuff off SPEED...and since SPEED could never survive without all the Nascar based programming....viola...no ALMS on SPEED.

What happened was ALMS was sold a bill of goods from ESPN/ABC/Disney..whoever. They were told that with their races being on ESPN3, it would open up to a much wider audience, and that they would also have visibility on Sportscenter. They just conveniently 'forgot' to tell ALMS that ESPN3 is not available to a large portion of the viewing public, and that they'll probably never show highlights on Sportscenter. So in some ways, the 'concept' sounded good, but the execution was very poor.

From my understanding, it was all ALMS could get, so they didn't have much choice. I'm a bit surprised they didn't go to Velocity channel, they seem to have some pretty good racing stuff on there...

But I still just can't understand how and why soccer is on Speed? Then again, ESPN does broadcast that highly athletic event called the National Spelling Bee.....

Tedster

Spped has sucked ever since they got Foxed