At right is a picture of what Newcastle United fandom in the US looked like last Sunday, and on too many previous weekend mornings: Toon shirts crammed into a corner of a pub, squinting at a jumpy computer screen, while red-clad fans of Liverpool and Man U and Arsenal were treated to real broadcasts on real TVs.
These days may soon be over.
We imagine word of the Premier League's new US television deal isn't making more than a ripple across the Atlantic, but here in America, fans of English soccer are reeling at the possibility of all PL matches being broadcast or streamed live via NBC and its partner networks starting next season. And no club stands to benefit more from the new arrangement than Newcastle United.
Newcastle United fans in America aren't likely to miss the Fox era of Premier League coverage. A glance at the @FoxSoccer timeline on Twitter will give you an idea of the shallow hokiness to which US supporters of PL clubs have been subjected the past few years. The level of televised commentary has been shockingly lazy and uninformed - before a recent Newcastle match Davide Santon was referred to as "David Stanton" and the studio commentators had clearly never heard of other Newcastle players referenced by Warren Barton, who as an NUFC alumnus is the only Fox personality who appears to be fully aware Newcastle United exists. Fox and its ESPN2 partner don't have airspace for more than a handful of live matches on TV broadcast per week, so their coverage and knowledge have tilted heavily to the four or five "big" clubs they perceive as comprising the US audience. To cite one example, Newcastle's final match against Everton last season was shunted to an online stream despite its Champions League implications, while space on broadcast TV was devoted to seven other matches including two involving Liverpool and Chelsea that had no relevance whatsoever.
Unlike Fox, which holds daytime broadcast rights to NCAA and NFL American football, NBC has plenty of room for weekend sports programming on its main network as well as cable/satellite subsidiaries like CNBC, MSNBC and the new NBC Sports Network, which has been doing a classy job with MLS broadcasts. Details about the new TV schedule are yet to come, but the network's stated intention of providing 18 to 20 matches live on NBC itself is especially tantalizing to fans here, considering that not even in England are Premier League games offered over the air and for free. On vacation recently I was thrilled enough to see a tape-delayed broadcast of the Newcastle-Man U match being shown to curious Americans in a remote Northwoods tavern via Fox, filling a hole in the network's NFL schedule. Imagine Newcastle being shown live and free in every pub in the land via one of just four major over-the-air networks here.
That's where Newcastle's organization and fans stand to benefit handsomely under the new television deal. Newcastle United is essentially the biggest Premier League club being discounted by American TV under the current arrangement. Everyone expects NBC will concentrate heavily on Manchester United and Arsenal and Chelsea and Liverpool, as Fox has. But NBC has the capacity to do more, and better too, judging from the quality of its Olympic and MLS coverage. With Newcastle waiting at the front of the line, this Toon Army loyalist can hardly wait.