OneSoccer

[Chad_Impact]

How unprofessional is OneSoccer? You'd think with all the flak they get for almost exclusively covering TFC, they'd improve but nope. They continue to almost double down and produce garbage articles like this

 

[Unnamed Trialist]

5 hours ago, Chad_Impact said:

How unprofessional is OneSoccer? You'd think with all the flak they get for almost exclusively covering TFC, they'd improve but nope. They continue to almost double down and produce garbage articles like this

You know Bedakian himself signed another brief preview article I saw, with spelling mistakes and a grammar flaw. And he's an editor?

What a piece of trash, bunch of illiterates and a disgrace to serious sports journalism.

[Cheeta]

5 hours ago, Chad_Impact said:

How unprofessional is OneSoccer? You'd think with all the flak they get for almost exclusively covering TFC, they'd improve but nope. They continue to almost double down and produce garbage articles like this

 

Yeesh.

[Watchmen]

Did anyone watch the Voyageurs Cup postgame?  Sounds like OneSoccer gave the Whitecaps celebrations pretty short shrift, learning nothing from their previous "Pacific beats Forge, so lets concentrate on Forge" debacle. 

[Chad_Impact]

30 minutes ago, Watchmen said:

Did anyone watch the Voyageurs Cup postgame?  Sounds like OneSoccer gave the Whitecaps celebrations pretty short shrift, learning nothing from their previous "Pacific beats Forge, so lets concentrate on Forge" debacle. 

Yup, barely covered it. 

I realized OneSoccer was an absolute joke during the 2019 final and they have actually managed to get worse and worse since then. 

3:28: SHOOOOOOOT

So bad and blatantly unprofessional it makes me laugh to this day

[Chad_Impact]

Unrelated...kind of...but what happened to Lloyd Barker? Used to be all over TSN & TSN 690 coverage of the Impact. I quite enjoyed his commentary of games but he seems to have disappeared from the broadcasting world. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Chad_Impact

[m-g-williams]

13 hours ago, Watchmen said:

Did anyone watch the Voyageurs Cup postgame?  Sounds like OneSoccer gave the Whitecaps celebrations pretty short shrift, learning nothing from their previous "Pacific beats Forge, so lets concentrate on Forge" debacle. 

Honestly, that doesn't shock me at all. I find that most major news outlets in Canada end up doing more or less the same thing - trying to present Ontario-centric perspectives as objective news analysis, when that's just not the case. Some outlets are better than others (especially when they lean heavily on local offices/reporters), but most of what I see from CTV, CBC, Global, the Globe and Mail - you name - isn't "national news coverage". It's Ontario/Toronto coverage of what's happening in other places (and the same ends up happening in French-language news media - almost always prioritizing Montreal/Quebec, or emphasizing the Quebec lens). 

For the record, I'm 1000% *not* against mainstream media, and I think Rebel News and similar garbage is less than worthless. But am I shocked that the Ontario/GTHA teams continue to get blind support like this? Hardly. 

[Bison44]

I did notice several times Ollie trying to reign Wheeler back in and talk about the Whitecaps.  Cant expect much more from Wheeler..he was a toadie for TFC for many years.  Is the COYR podcast still going?  

[Unnamed Trialist]

One Soccer lacks basic professionality, and further: in world soccer this sort of centrism doesn't work, ever, and where it persists it's a scourge. It doesn't happen in England, in France it's only recent with PSG but historically the winners were not in the capital, in Italy La Gazzetta had certain N Italy biases but they were spread between teams in different regions. So the Ontario bias from One Soccer is archaic, and there's more.

MediaPro is a Barcelona-based media company, and owned by Catalan separatists, in a country long focused on Madrid and Real Madrid. To the point of RM being propped up for its propaganda value by the Franco regime. The RM media bias is horrible in Spain, and sometimes it still shows (I watch 2nd division and they sometimes will treat teams as if they are foreign if up against a team from the Madrid region or Castille). Atlético Madrid has helped balance things, Barça's success has helped, but it is still there. The mainstream tv channels, all in Madrid, public and private, are pretty bad, but most fans don't rely on them for soccer anyways. As and Marca are in Madrid but As has many Atlético supporters, and is affiliated with the centre-left Prisa group. All this too is being taken apart slowly, mostly because if they do the sort of crap Wheeler is getting away with, with Kurt's approval, they'd be massively derided on social media. Basically, that the critical murmours we see here raise their heads in viral form at times.

MediaPro in Spain would in no way agree with a centralist bias from OneSoccer, as their existence is consciously and deliberately a counterpoint to Madrid. In fact they would find repugnant any sort of centralist tilt in reporting and opinion.

[masster]

21 hours ago, Watchmen said:

Did anyone watch the Voyageurs Cup postgame?  Sounds like OneSoccer gave the Whitecaps celebrations pretty short shrift, learning nothing from their previous "Pacific beats Forge, so lets concentrate on Forge" debacle. 

I did. It wasn't terrible, but it suffered from the fact that none of their personnel were actually in the stadium. When everybody is working from on offsite studio, it is harder to react to what is actually happening. 

[Watchmen]

35 minutes ago, masster said:

I did. It wasn't terrible, but it suffered from the fact that none of their personnel were actually in the stadium. When everybody is working from on offsite studio, it is harder to react to what is actually happening. 

Fair enough, though at the same time it's the Cup final - maybe either send some regulars there or at least ensure there's someone local on the ground to cover it. 

[Ed_S]

Looks like OneSoccer has been dropped from the sports package I have with Telus in Alberta. I have the app so it's not a big deal for me but did give them some exposure to the non-(rogers+bell+shaw) crowd.

 

[mpg_29]

OneSoccer files CRTC complaint over Rogers’ refusal to carry the streaming service on cable

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-rogers-onesoccer-crtc-complaint

[narduch]

Just now, mpg_29 said:

OneSoccer files CRTC complaint over Rogers’ refusal to carry the streaming service on cable

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-rogers-onesoccer-crtc-complaint

Good for them.

Although CRTC is in Bell and Rogers pocket so probably nothing happens 

[Watchmen]

58 minutes ago, mpg_29 said:

OneSoccer files CRTC complaint over Rogers’ refusal to carry the streaming service on cable

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-rogers-onesoccer-crtc-complaint

Weird, because everyone keeps telling me that everyone is cutting cable and being steaming only is the smart way for the CPL to go.

[narduch]

1 minute ago, Watchmen said:

Weird, because everyone keeps telling me that everyone is cutting cable and being steaming only is the smart way for the CPL to go.

Don't see why its a bad thing for One Soccer to diversify how they are broadcast.

They are also on a competing streaming service (Fubo).

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

It's the need to be on Rogers cable to be viable angle in the article that runs counter to what we were being told back around 2018.

[dyslexic nam]

It is pretty straightforward.  Lots of people still have cable so the convenience of being able to flip to channel XXX to see a game is pretty understandable.  And as long as the big telecoms are fighting tooth and nail to hold onto sports viewers, there will continue to be an audience there.  Yes, people are moving increasingly to streaming services - but it would be dumb for a media company to intentionally close the door on a still-significant segment of potential customers.   

[MtlMario]

3 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

It is pretty straightforward.  Lots of people still have cable so the convenience of being able to flip to channel XXX to see a game is pretty understandable.  And as long as the big telecoms are fighting tooth and nail to hold onto sports viewers, there will continue to be an audience there.  Yes, people are moving increasingly to streaming services - but it would be dumb for a media company to intentionally close the door on a still-significant segment of potential customers.   

If I flip to channel XXX it's not to watch a game.😀

[Aird25]

29 minutes ago, Watchmen said:

Weird, because everyone keeps telling me that everyone is cutting cable and being steaming only is the smart way for the CPL to go

What advantage would there be to reach only the streaming or tv audiences? Reaching the largest number of viewers seems pretty straight forward

[dyslexic nam]

28 minutes ago, MtlMario said:

If I flip to channel XXX it's not to watch a game.😀

 Now for that I use the internet exclusively. 

[Cheeta]

49 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

What advantage would there be to reach only the streaming or tv audiences? Reaching the largest number of viewers seems pretty straight forward

100%.

Cord cutting is a real thing, its changed our viewing practices and will continue to change our viewing practices but there is still waaaay too big of a slice of "paying" customers living with the cable boxes to ignore.

 

[JamboAl]

I’m a paying cable customer.  $150 a month for crap.  But I still can’t bring myself to cutting the cord, kinda like my home phone.  Anyone got swamp land in Qatar to sell me?  I can go look at it in November.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

21 minutes ago, Cheeta said:

100%.

Cord cutting is a real thing, its changed our viewing practices and will continue to change our viewing practices but there is still waaaay too big of a slice of "paying" customers living with the cable boxes to ignore....

...and there's a limit to how many streaming services most people are going to subscribe to. Being a small part of something larger is potentially important even in that context. Better to be accessible through something like Netflix or Amazon Prime than to be flying solo.

[Ansem]

On 5/31/2022 at 11:00 PM, Ansem said:

It's not that straightforward - the only sports channel I could see doing that in Quebec is TVA Sports, owned by Quebecor.

Sorry this will be a long post

I had an interesting chat about CPL with someone in business and talked about Onesoccer and the league not being on other networks. This is what she said in a nutshell

-->Major sports channel are owned by Bell and Rogers who both are major telecom companies

-->Despite them competing for clients - they've been ruthlessly efficient at keeping foreign players out of the Canadian market - which frustrates the government to no end who keeps coming up with ways to attract more players --> politically good (I think it was Verizon who almost came here)

-->This brings us to MediaPro, a Spanish company trying to get market share in the Canadian sport media business, challenging Bell and Rogers

-->Had CSB picked TSN or Sportsnet or even CBC - they would have behaved far differently towards the league

-->CSB picking MediaPro means that they also invited a foreign player in their market who made their intentions to launch a cable channel known very early - directly challenging both Rogers and Bell monopolies 

-->According to this person, TSN & Sportsnet aren't purposely "targeting" CPL, but they are trying to make it as difficult as possible for MediaPro to get a solid foundation in the market --> in a nutshell, they want them out 

-->So they are giving them as little publicity as possible to keep them as a marginal player and stop/stagnate their growth - CPL being ignored is collateral damage (no scores, highlights, barely mentioned on their medias, trying to bury Forge 1st CL run, not mentioning CPL unless they play an MLS club in Canchamp)

-->While they've been effective at containing MediaPro, it hurts the league attendance, popularity and exposure as a side effect.

-->While Rogers and Bell have shared properties multiple times in the past and are willing to do business with one other, they understand MediaPro business model and they will avoid purchasing games from them unless something major happens --> CanMNT incredible WCQ run --> Don't be surprise if they pass on Gold Cups and CNL + CanWNT otherwise, they'd be helping MediaPro business plan succeeding 

-->This is why Telus (and others) are willing to carry Onesoccer on cable but not Bell and Rogers. Unless the CRTC intervenes, they will fight it the whole way.

-->Quebecor who owns TVA Sports might buy the rights to CPL Quebec City games / they are a major player in Quebec --> CEO Peladeau hate of both Rogers and Bell is an understatement but TVA Sports has profitability issues so buying CPL games while already paying for MLS rights for CF Montreal might come down to how much resources they can allocate to that.

-->CPL's other problem is the nature of their deal with MediaPro. If it was up to them, they happily give a weekend game away on CBC to boost their visibility and grow their fanbase BUT they have no FINAL say on the matter until 2029.

-->The league choose the upfront cash and production value (which surprise a lot of people for a Canadian league here and abroad) OVER potentially more visibility/mainstream attention but little cash upfront --> I recall Paul Beirne saying on Twitter that major channel DID bid for CPL but it was nowhere near what MediaPro offered

As I mentioned previously, the increase of MLS content on Onesoccer might be a sign that they are setting the table to bid on the rights, which makes the most sense. Otherwise, you're just helping your rivals who wants you out by promoting the very product they hold the rights too which makes little business sense.

Getting exclusive rights to MLS would be the game changer they would need because they'd be in an advantageous position:

1. Drastic increase in subscription to their service
2. Their MLS content makes it more attractive other cable providers
3. Impossible for mainstream media/major providers to ignore MLS content with the footages being under "Onesoccer" control in Canada - that's more exposure for them
4. Freezing out CPL would no longer make any sense for those major conpanies --> content is key so expect highlights, scoreboards and soccer shows being more complete
5. For the league, there would be a noticeable boost in popularity and visibility improving their bottom line.
6. Reselling games is at the core of their business model - more channels (national & regional) would have the opportunity to broadcast CPL and/or MLS games as well boosting their viewership as well

There you have it - a business perspective on the media situation.

I wasn't too far off after all