NBC will air their final Major League Soccer telecast this weekend, and it’s not without its ratings potential, despite the limited numbers that have plagued the league on the network and NBCSN in recent years. Landon Donovan will be playing his final regular season game in MLS (though his LA Galaxy did qualify for the playoffs), and two of the league’s biggest markets — Los Angeles and Seattle — will play a game with consequence to it. The winner of the match would take home MLS’ Supporters Shield, the award given to the team with the most points at the end of the regular season.
The game airs at 2:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, which on one hand is kind of inconvenient, because it airs at 11:30 a.m. local time in both of the participating markets. That said, it’s part of what’s been NBC’s strategy with MLS in the last 15 months: air games after the Premier League. The attempt to get some soccer continuity from the biggest league in the world to one of the emerging ones was never not a good idea for the network.
One problem with that: the game airing in the 12:30 p.m. ET slot on Saturday is Swansea City taking on Leicester City. No disrespect to the Swans and the Foxes, but those are two clubs with very little American fan bases to speak of. While both teams have played relatively well to begin the season, the match shouldn’t really be much of a draw.
NBC’s big match of the weekend is a rare foray into Sundays. Manchester United are playing Chelsea at Noon ET and the network is going to put it on for only their second Sunday broadcast since gaining EPL rights. The only problem is that Fox has a national NFL telecast from Wembley starting at 9:30 a.m. ET (Falcons-Lions) and by the time that’s over, the regular, American-based games will start to get underway.
So it’s an interesting question: which game will draw the highest ratings of the weekend? From this American soccer supporter’s hopes, you have to want Donovan’s final match to at least come in second place, at least beat Swansea and Lie-cester. I think it’s possible for that to happen, but the cynic in me believes that American Premier League fans will just watch whatever’s handed to them and reject whatever MLS is thrown their way.
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