I have ESPN+ for UFC. It's still only five bucks. You can afford it.
It's not a matter of that. ESPN+ is very reasonable and affordable, I agree. But it's poor form, especially when there's still no live American sports (other than NASCAR, which they don't have broadcast rights for) to be tossing marquee games behind a paywall instead of broadcasting them if they have the ability to. The person you quoted brought up a great point which I've also mentioned with regard to Serie A as well in how ESPN has deliberately chosen lesser games to be the ones they put on TV as opposed to games that would be more appealing.
For example - ESPN has aired four Sassuolo games since Serie A resumed. Sassuolo has played nine games in total, and among those games they've played Juve (#1), Inter (#2), Atalanta (#3), and Lazio (#4). Wanna guess which games they didn't air on ESPN or ESPN2? They aired them playing Parma (#12), Fiorentina (#13), Cagliari (#11), and either Lecce (#18) or Bologna (#10), but not when they played any of the teams that will be in the CL next year/competing (or "competing") for the Scudetto this year. It's honestly gross. NBC has a subscription service and throws Premier League games behind it when there's multiple games on at the same time, but you can bet that, 95% of the time, they choose the game with the most broad appeal to be the one they broadcast on television. And guess what? Unlike with the NHL, NBC has received plaudits over the years for their coverage of the league. ESPN, pre-COVID, would air one game a week, often in a terrible time slot, and rarely a game of any marquee value, and since the restart, they've aired more games, but they aired #18 Genoa vs. #20 SPAL last weekend but not #1 Juve vs. #2 Atalanta, you know?
I dunno, it just feels like one of those old "just because you can doesn't mean you should" sort of deals. ESPN snaps up these broadcast rights and then does absolutely nothing to help promote the league. Guess you also need to blame the footballing bodies for taking the largest bid they get with zero further considerations, sure. but there was nothing ESPN, ESPN2, or ABC for that matter were airing yesterday that were better than an FA Cup semi-final game. Same deal with today, too. And it doesn't even sound like the Final itself will be on television, at least, at last check.
