Up until the start of the 2012-13 European season, Canadian soccer fans were lucky. Although we lived far from the playing pitches of the world's top leagues, we could watch multiple live games a week from the comfort of our living room -- often in glourious HD.
GolTV had the Bundesliga and La Liga, theScore Serie A and the EPL was on Sportsnet and TSN.
The English Championship and French league was also available as well as CONCACAF and CONMEBOL World Cup qualifiers. Every big game was on TV. There was no doubt, it was only a matter of where.
Then Al Jazeera got involved.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
The Middle Eastern television network wanted to break into the American (read USA) market and purchased the Italian, Spanish, French, English Championship (along with the English League Cup) and North and South America World Cup qualifying rights in an effort to do just that. Under the banner of beIN Sport, they started to provide Americans with exclusive coverage of those leagues.
Unfortunately for Canadians, the Canadian rights were also sold as part of the Al Jazeera purchase -- they were "North American" rights, not USA rights. And, Al Jazeera doesn't have a broadcast partner to show beIN Sport here in Canada.
If you wanted to watch the last half of Lionel Messi's remarkable year, Atletico Madrid's challenge to break into the top two of Spain, PSG's attempts to make the money count, or Juve's remarkable two season run on top of Serie A you were out of luck -- or had to go the illegal route (and fight pop-up ads/computer viruses at a streaming site).
Attempts to get details from beIN Sport have been frustrating. All they can ever say is that they are "working on" getting the games shown in Canada and that they expect a breakthrough "soon."
If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that harassing beIN about this has become a hobby of mine (I want to watch Atleti, damnit). For the last few months I send them several messages a week reminding them that Canadian fans are getting screwed over by the lack of action, whether it is from them of by the cable/satellite companies.
Today, they responded:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-in-reply-to="291226094898651136"><p>@<a href="https://twitter.com/24thminute">24thminute</a> Working on this. Very soon, every tweet gets forwarded for added pressure. Thank you for your patience.</p>— beIN SPORT (@beINSPORTUSA) <a href="
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The message I get from that is that public pressure might help get this done.
So, if you want to watch Italian, Spanish, French, English Championship, or World Cup qualifiers on television this year let beIN know. They are best reached on Twitter at @beINSportUSA. Additionally, they tell Canadians to put pressure on their local satellite and cable providers.
You know what to do...