Photo by ISIphotos.com
The USA-Mexico World Cup qualifier on Aug. 12 in Mexico City is going to be broadcast in English. You're just going to have to work a bit harder to see it.
Telemundo announced on Monday that it will broadcast the match the match in Spanish on Telemundo and on English on mun2, an English-language channel geared toward young Latinos in the United States. The announcement comes after it was revealed last week that Telemundo had rejected reasonable offers for the English-language rights to the match.
So what happened to ESPN's bid for the match? According to sources, the bid was killed by Telemundo's exorbitant price tag, which one source put at between three and four times what ESPN was willing to pay and what is usually paid for those type of matches.
"They set a price they knew nobody would pay," said one source. "It's safe to say they had no intention of selling."
So where do you get mun2 exactly?
If you have DirecTV, mun2 can be found in channel 410 and can be seen as part of the DirecTV Latin Programming package. Don't get that package? If you're dead set on watching the match in English, you may want to consider ordering the Latin Programming package for the month of August and cancelling after the match. There is no word yet on who will be calling the game for mun2.
If that doesn't work, then you may be forced to either find an English-language feed on the internet or watching the game at a soccer bar.
Should USA fans be upset with this development? Yes, but they should also realize that, prior to the 2005 World Cup qualifier at Azteca, the USA-Mexico road qualifiers were never shown on English-language television. As one U.S. soccer official told me last week, it's not an ideal scenario, but isn't unheard of either.
That isn't stopping some fans from organizing petitions to try and put pressure on NBC Universal, parent company of Telemundo, to air the match on another NBC network.
What do you think of this development? Will you be ordering mun2? Will you watch the match at a soccer bar or via web feed instead? Planning to make the trip to Mexico City instead?
Share your thoughts below.