La Liga is continuing to get plenty of broadcast television exposure this season. And for the first time ever, the league’s marquee matchup will be showcased on ABC.
On Thursday, ESPN announced that El Clásico, the rivalry between Spanish sides Barcelona and Real Madrid, will air on ABC on Sunday, October 25 at 4 p.m. ET. It’ll be the first time El Clásico will have the broadcast spotlight of ABC, but it will actually be the fourth La Liga match to be shown on the Disney-owned broadcast network this season. Earlier in the year, ABC aired Barcelona-Elche and Espanyol-Real Madrid. The two matches combined to average 905,000 viewers. On October 18, a week prior to El Clásico, ABC will air Real Madrid-Sevilla on a Sunday afternoon.
ABC’s broadcast of El Clásico will feature a one-hour pre-match show ahead of the meeting. The network notes that its coverage will include reporters based in Spain, as well as post-match programming slated for its digital outlets.
Of course, El Clásico has the unfortunate problem of competing with Sunday-afternoon football for the American audience. That said, broadcast networks have had decent success airing non-NFL sports on Sunday afternoons, perhaps taking advantage of some channel-surfing momentum as tens of millions of people tune in for football. Last year’s WNBA playoff game between the Lynx and Fever, which went up against Week 2 of the NFL schedule, drew nearly one million viewers on ABC. One would think that the audience for El Clásico is rather differentiated from the NFL audience, which should help matters as well.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.