Whitecaps Football Shorts # 1

Sometimes we feel like we’re constantly criticising the Caps here at AFTN. We don’t mean for it to be that way, but they’re not giving us a lot to work with at the moment!

Last week we were pretty scathing about the lack of marketing in the build up to the opening game. So, credit where credit’s due, things look like they’re about to change in pretty dramatic fashion.

The Whitecaps are going to launch a Countdown ‘Til Kickoff campaign on Thursday February 17th.

It’s part of a huge marketing blitz planned for the 30 days countdown to MLS. We’re promised that “every day leading up to our first match we’ll celebrate the beautiful game with events, stunts and celebrity videos”.

Better late than never and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating and all that, but it sounds fantastic. We want the whole city to be talking about the Whitecaps. The team, the players and the fans.

Judging by the Sedin on the front page of the website, we can expect a lot of the football loving Canucks players to make statements of how much they love the Caps and are looking forward to watching them this season. Some will criticise that, but in this hockey mad city, that’s sadly some of the best endorsements you can have to get people to take notice. They’re respected and many of them are genuine football fans.

When it comes to events, there will hopefully be a number of player meet and greets and we’re just crying out for some kind of open day at Empire. Even if it’s the day after the TFC opener if they don’t want to dampen the mystique of Empire. Please do this. Just for us!

Stunts-wise, we’d love to see something projected on to the sails at Canada Place. Maybe drape a huge banner from the Harbour Centre Tower. A flashmob of fans taking over Granville Street chanting and singing. Jay DeMerit ziplining through the downtown core. Wes Knight firing his trademark long throws off the Lions Gate bridge, Capilano suspension bridge and down Grouse Mountain. Joe Cannon being fired out of a cannon…

We’d also just settle for a couple of proven strikers joining the team!

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It’s been in the rumour mill for weeks now, but yesterday Major League Soccer officially announced a new, six year Canadian broadcast rights agreement with TSN. 24 regular season MLS games will be broadcast live this year on TSN and TSN2 – all involving at either Vancouver Whitecaps or Toronto – and this will increase to 30 next year when Montreal Impact enter the mix.

The Caps will feature 12 times, with 9 games on the main channel and a further 3 on TSN2. Both the all-Canadian match ups between the Caps and TFC will be broadcast and all games will be in High Definition.

Two big games, New York in May and Seattle in June, will be shown on TSN2. Most likely because they fall bang in the middle of the hockey playoffs, but with some providers not carrying the channel, this may piss off some.

On the whole though, it’s great stuff. This deal, along with the Team 1040/1410 radio deal announced last week, will give the Whitecaps a fantastic media presence and exposure both in the lower mainland and throughout Canada.

There’s still a deal for regional broadcast rights to be announced, which should see the other 22 regular season games broadcast in Vancouver and possibly other parts of Western Canada. CTV are the rumoured favourites right now, but AFTN feels that we may see these games spread out to a couple of broadcasters.

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The television and radio deals throw up the questions as to who will be doing the commentating. There is a strong campaign amongst Caps fans right now to ensure Peter Schaad is doing the play by play commentary on the radio. Anyone but him would be criminal.

As for the TV, we just want some decent people both in the studio and commentating. TSN do have one huge advantage over what we’ve been used to. They don’t have Nigel Fucking Reed. At least they better not have! That will at least save me smashing my television screen several times over the course of the season. Worst football pundit and commentator EVER.

There’s a few things we’d like to see covered as part of the radio and TV deals and we’ll be looking at that in more detail in our Metro column on Friday.

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Don Garber was in Vancouver yesterday doing the media rounds and talking to the Board of Trade.

He was very complimentary about a number of the Whitecaps off-field activities in the build up to our inaugural MLS season.

“They matter here in this community, they matter in Canada and they’re going to matter throughout the United States.” was Garber’s verdict of the Caps. He went on to praise the sponsorship deals that the Whitecaps have lined up with the likes of Bell and EA Sports. “It’s a sponsorship that any pro league would be proud of, whether it’s here or in European football”. The Bell deal in particular is thought to be the biggest ever in MLS.

Facing the media throng, we’d asked some journalists to ask Garber some tough questions and hoped they’d grill him on ticketing issues, away fan travel and supporters culture. From what we’ve seen and heard so far, he got an easy ride.

We can only hope that this fawning doesn’t continue the way it appears it does with the Canucks in the city. What Vancouver needs is journalists not only asking the tough questions that fans want, but also getting the answers too. Will we get this? Maybe not this coming season, but hopefully in the future. That seems to be the way it’s going in Seattle now and it’s how it should be done.

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Finally, bad news if you love to abuse.

The players we can’t wait to abuse are falling like flies!

First Bright Dike had an achilles problem, as we reported last week, then Steve Cronin broke his wrist and now, this very morning, Canadian traitor Teal Bunbury has been taken to hospital with what is thought to be a dislocated shoulder.

Does some long term Caps fan have a voodoo doll going out there?

At least we still have Beckham. Or will we….

Raft Of TV Football Detrimental To MLS?

When I first moved to Canada, I was amazed by the raft of football on television here. Couldn’t believe I could watch more football on my telly than back in the UK and much of it live.

There was too much of course. Never thought that could happen, but when you not only have the usual football from England, Scotland, Italy and Germany but also domestic action from the likes of Uruguay, Columbia and Greece, well you know that perhaps there’s just too many channels and too much airtime to try and fill.

Just take today as a typical example. There are 23 games being shown live or as-live, from ten different leagues around world, on 9 different channels. Wow.

There’s not enough hours in the day to try and watch all that and have a life!

Thankfully I don’t get all of the channels and have no interest in sitting down to watch the likes of Olympiakos Volos v Atromitos Athens in the Greek League.

How do you keep track? How can you possibly know what’s on and when at all times? Thankfully I have found my football telly listings bible in the truly must read Football On Canadian TV Blog.

I can’t thank the guys that run that blog enough. I’d be lost without it. It’s perfect for planning your week’s footballing couch potato-ness.

What I’ve always been amazed at though is the lack of MLS games on easily accessible television here. Whatever you think of the quality of the MLS, it is our domestic league. Even more so now with two, soon to be three, Canadian teams playing in it.

You had TFC on CBC and some of the other channels, but that’s not really football. I believe that their games in recent seasons were one of the most watched homegrown comedy shows on Canadian TV. If they’d only signed Brett Butt then I think that would have pushed them into the parody playoffs. Sadly for them, they couldn’t even make that.

What always frustrated me was that we were trying to spread the word of the Whitecaps to the Vancouver public and on the move to MLS. For those with a passing interest on seeing what it was all about, they couldn’t, without forking out for speciality channels or finding online streams.

They couldn’t see the excellent atmospheres in Toronto and Seattle. What to expect and to try and bring here. What teams to despise. What players to abuse. All the stuff they should know about their domestic league and the league that their team is going to be playing in.

Ask them to name all the MLS teams, never mind just some of the players, and they’d be struggling. Ask them to name Premiership equivalents and they’d have no trouble at all. They could probably also tell you all the grounds and shirt sponsors.

MLS is a poor product compared to leagues elsewhere as well. I’ll admit that it’s never held any interest to me until the Caps got in to it. Now I have to feign interest in what the likes of Chivas have been up to. That’s not being a Eurosnob. I watched lower league Scottish football ffs.

Having top action from the likes of the Premiership on for hours after hours every weekend can only damage the MLS. The action they’ll see in MLS will never compare. The quality of players on display will never compare. They’ll see some coming to the end of their careers and wanting a last pay day. They’ll know who they are and what they used to be like. The passion on the pitch, and the history that certain fixtures are steeped in, will not be there for a long time.

I can tell you now that there’s going to be some that will be disappointed with what they’ll see from the MLS and the Whitecaps. At least they’ll get some good matchday atmosphere from the Southsiders, until the MLS and TV companies get offended by some of our actions no doubt and try and sanitise that.

It’s hard. Lots of football on TV creates a buzz for people wanting to see live games. Then they go and they think it’s more fun watching at home and at times a lot less hassle and cheaper.

MLS should be on our screens more and it should have been in Vancouver for the last two years. We should have it forced down our throats. I’d have more respect for a company like TSN2 picking up MLS two years ago than just wanting to show the games now that the Caps are about to start playing in it.

The problem the MLS will always face though is that the likes of the Premiership can air at non peak times. MLS games need channels to decide to ditch programmes they can get better viewing figures for and we all know that’s never going to happen. That’s why even the UEFA Champions League got bumped for curling in the past.

The other problem is that even fans like me, who will be going home and away to watch the Caps in MLS, would rather watch the English and Scottish games on Setanta than a match up between Sporting Kansas City and Colorado Rapids.

And that’s not going to change any time soon.