US at Honduras on TV: Money Talks; Fans Sulk

By El Chupacabra
Looking forward to watching the US Men's National Team play Honduras in their important World Cup Qualifying game on Saturday? Well, you're screwed.

As the NY Times has reported, you can only watch the match on closed-circuit television at roughly 200 outlets across the country. And guess what? The morons in suits at MLS are partially responsible.

"Soccer United Marketing, the marketing arm of Major League Soccer that also owns the rights to United States home games, sold the rights to Honduras before the qualifier in Chicago in June. At that time, S.U.M. attempted to purchase the rights to the return match from the Honduran federation, but they had already been sold to Mediapro, according to Dan Courtemanche, an M.L.S. executive," wrote Goal's Jack Bell.

"Under the current system, the home federation (in this case, Honduras) owns the TV rights to its qualifiers in the Concacaf region. And while the Brazilian company Traffic has negotiated rights deals with most countries in Central America and the Caribbean, the Hondurans reached a deal with a Spanish company, Mediapro, for the game against the United States. After unsuccessfully trying to sell the rights to ESPN and Fox Soccer Channel, Mediapro made a deal with Integrated Sports Media to do the game on closed circuit."

In Columbus, the only locations will be Claddagh Irish Pub in the Brewery District and Fado's Irish Pub at Easton.

Is anyone at MLS Inc. (otherwise known as the International House of Soccer) an actual fan of the game? Or are they all a bunch of Red State, cheeze-dick, Community College of East Toledo Business School DIP SHITS hoping to eventually jump over to the NBA, MLB or NFL?

Email or call your local MLS "franchise" (we would use the word "team" but it doesn't seem appropriate anymore) and let them know just how pissed you are. El Chupa was scrambling to find the game and was even willing to fork over his hard-earned, paltry wages as a professional dog walker to watch it on Pay-Per-View. Instead, he will probably just drink himself to sleep watching Tivoed reruns of Saved by the Bell.