Football On Live Television

A puzzle

Football On Live Television

As an ignorant American, I find myself oddly fascinated with the history of the defunct North American Soccer League.

If you don’t know, the NASL was kind of the predecessor of today’s MLS. I should add an emphasis on “kind of.” The NASL was totally crazy, marked by owners who were willing to spend silly amounts of money on top European, Central American, and South American stars — largely money that they didn’t actually have.

In addition to the rules modifications that made the NASL famous, another “innovation” was broadcasting games live. Some (though not all) NASL teams had local television broadcasting deals that allowed for certain games to be broadcast live. In fact, if you have time you can go back and watch classic matches on YouTube — or you can watch summaries, such as this one I made a few months back:

The thing here that puzzles me the most, though, is that The Football League in England didn’t offer live broadcasts at the time. In fact, my understanding is that the only live matches were international matches and certain cup finals. As many of you already know, it wasn’t until 1983 that The Football League finally offered live broadcasts — and even then it was only a handful of games a year.

Part of me wonders if the lack of popularity that the NASL faced wasn’t at least in part due to the nature of those live broadcasts. If you compare a live NASL broadcast from, say, 1977 with an old recording of Match of the Day or something similar, you’ll notice right away that the more polished highlight broadcast had better replays, an emphasis on the action, and was missing anything that was even remotely boring.

In fact, the real problem with those old NASL broadcasts is that they kept cutting to commercials. American television had at the time a fascination with pushing out commercial breaks once every 7 or 8 minutes or so, and the concept of 45 minutes of a single program without interruptions was heresay. It’s pretty easy to find NASL broadcasts where the game cut away right before a big save, or even an important goal.

I wonder what might have happened if the NASL had restricted live broadcasts in those early years, sticking instead with the small documentary style seen in Match of the Day or the NFL’s Game of the Week. At the very least, it would have made for a much more compelling package. Fun as it might be, there’s only so much live footage from awkward angles and cameras that don’t move in time that I can stand.

What do you think?