New Year’s Day is an awesome day for Premier League fans, just like it’s an awesome day for college football fans. Every Premier League team will play to kick off 2015, with eight matches taking place in the 10 AM timeslot. Instead of simply picking one game to air and shuffling the other seven off to Extra Time, NBCSN will debut Premier League Breakaway at 10 AM, sandwiched between Stoke City-Manchester United at 7:45 and Tottenham Hotspur-Chelsea at 12:30. What is Premier League Breakaway, you ask? Good question.
Essentially, Breakaway will function like NFL RedZone, cutting between the eight matches to show every goal and significant play that occurs. Fox had some success with the RedZone focus on soccer with its Multimatch 90 feed during Champions League matchdays this fall, and NBCSN is trying to replicate the success on New Year’s Day. Rebecca Lowe (of course) will play the Scott Hansen/Andrew Siciliano traffic cop role during the broadcast, while Kyle Martino and Robbie Mustoe will pop up during the pre and post-match shows. If you’re not into the new telecast and simply want to watch your club’s match in full, don’t fret – all eight matches at 10 AM (and the other two matches on the day) will be available on Extra Time and NBC Live Extra.
It’s a cool idea, and if it goes well, I wouldn’t mind seeing NBC go back to the well once again (perhaps on the final day of the season, if there are close races for the league title, a spot in the Champions League, and/or relegation). In addition to Breakaway and the two live matches, NBCSN is going all-out with the Premier League on New Year’s Day – Spurs-Chelsea is followed up with hours upon hours of studio programming, including Goal Zone, Match of the Day, Premier League Download, and Premier League Encore.
In previous years, NBC has relied mainly on the Winter Classic to counterprogram the endless assault of bowl games on ESPN’s family of networks. This year, they’ll offer a second option for those who aren’t fans of college football. All in all, New Year’s Day will be a great day to be a sports fan – you can constantly watch live games across three different sports for a good 15 hours or so. I’m not going to complain.
