re: Mexico WC Qualifiers on ESPN

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From what I gathered the last few months is that each game you are paying the host country.

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Yes and no. The host country can do whatever TF they want to with the broadcast rights. The "business sense" thing to do is to sell them to the highest bidder.

Traffic Sports bought the rights directly from the individual federations, and (I'm guessing) took the valuable pieces (i.e Mexico and US home and away matches) and sell those to the highest bidders. Univision valued the Spanish language Mexican rights for all matches the most. (I honestly don't know if Uni deals with FMF or Traffic on that.) I assume a similar deal is in place with the US and ESPN.

Traffic held the rights to the first US away qualifiers in the last round and distributed them on PPV, presumably to build outrage/demand and drive the price up. BeIN comes in with a large bid for the English and Spanish rights to the US away package to push their new channels.

The leftover piece? English language rights to Mexican home matches. Who would want those, right? Amerimexicans probably want the broadcast in Spanish. So.... Who would want those? People who want to see the Mexico home match against the USA. My guess is ESPN bought those on the cheap, which may be good for idiot US "fans" like the OP.

TL;DR version:

Each fed sells the rights to who they deem fit. ESPN and Univision bought the broadcast rights to the home matches in native language for their respective federations. Traffic approaches the smaller feds, buys their home rights, chops the valuable parts up.... Sells them to the highest bidder, PPVs the rest. BeIN outbids ESPN for the most valuable piece... US away rights.

TL;DR summary:

frick CONCACAF, frick Mexico, frick Traffic Sports.