Quote:
Originally Posted by thurmas
MLS and apple have signed a 10 year $250 million per year tv deal. This will be 9.6 million a year for the 3 Canadian teams i believe the previous mls u.s. tv deal they are currently in pays 90 million per year
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People in Quebec are saying this will be the death of the CF Montréal if it means no regular (well cable) TV coverage of their games.
The press release did say quite clearly that games of all three Canadian clubs (and not just Montreal) would have French play-by-play, but no further details were provided.
So it's unclear whether it will be a Montreal-based crew (familiar to Quebec audiences) or some random Apple-MLS broadcast crew based in the US and made up of French (from France) imports.
Note that soccer announcers for TVA Sports or RDS already have a number of French imports among them, though they are based in Montreal and live the pulse of the club and the city day in and day out. It's not the same as having random talking heads based in NYC or LA, even if the latter are speaking in French.
CF Montréal is already fragile, having gone through an almost tragic and largely unnecessary hard re-brand over the past year or two.
MLS imposing a more arm's length media presence on them doesn't come at a very good time.