David Beckham is making $2.5 million less this year under the terms of his new agreement with the Los Angeles than he did last year when he was MLS's highest-paid player with $6,500,000.04 in guaranteed compensation.

Middle East network Al Jazeera is buying up whatever international soccer television rights it can its hands on -- and that includes U.S. rights to some of Europe's biggest leagues.

A total of 1,348,000 viewers -- 992,000 for English-language coverage and 356,000 for Spanish-language coverage -- tuned in for the U.S. television coverage of the final day of the Premier League season, a jump of 72 percent over 2011 final day viewing.

Major League Soccer will open its 11th soccer-specific stadium when the Houston Dynamo hosts D.C. United on Saturday.

How big is the English Premier League on American television? Seven Fox and two ESPN networks will be showing live coverage of the final day of the EPL season.

Monday's Manchester derby between Manchester City over Manchester United for the English Premier League lead on ESPN set an EPL record for the largest viewing audience ever on U.S. cable television. The game was seen by an average of 1.033 million viewers, based on a 0.8 rating, according to Nielsen.