Television Rights for La Liga and Serie A

Be aware in the United States, that if you expect to tune into Gol TV or Fox Soccer Channel for your weekly soccer games, this is going to change. As of last month the rights to both La Liga and Serie A matches have been bought out by a new entrant to the football broadcasting rights game Al-Jazeera Television and specifically their affiliates BeIn Sports 1 and their sister channel BeIn Sports2.

It's been a long time coming actually. The channels are based in France and debuted last year. There were rumors that negotiations were ongoing for foreign rights to Spanish and Italian matches and then last month Gol TV America's Phil Schoen quit that network only for his partner Ray Hudson to follow. That pricked the ears up and the onrush to broadcast began.

Now I realize that some of you have varying degrees of trepidation regarding channels affiliated with Al-Jazeera due to some lizard-brain reaction to an Arabic channel covering Western sports. Stop it. Al-Jazeera is one of the most highly respected outlets in terms of journalistic integrity that we as a human species have. If BeIn1 and BeIn2 are affiliated with them that is a good thing.

If you live in the United States, and I do too so give me some special dispensation in this at least, get a hold of your Cable  or Satellite provider and request for them to be added to your package. You will not be able to watch Serie A or La Liga games in the United States without access to either of these channels.