It's been quite a Year 1 for the San Antonio Scorpions. The NASL expansion club is in first place. It leads the Division II league in average attendance at Heroes Stadium by a wide margin. And it has reached a sponsorship agreement with Toyota that includes the naming rights to the soccer-specific stadium it is building.

The arrival of Al Jazeera's beIN SPORT's has shaken the U.S. soccer television market. It acquired media rights to three of the five most popular European leagues, Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A and France's Ligue 1, leaving only Fox and ESPN with a share of England's Premier League and GolTV with Germany's Bundesliga.

"Solo: A Memoir of Hope," by Hope Solo with Ann Killion, will debut at No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list, the highest ever for a soccer book.

Yousef Al Obaidly, managing director of beIN Sport, says Al-Jazeera's new soccer channel is the place for U.S. soccer fans -- though they'll have to scramble to find it if they want to watch the Jamaica-USA World Cup 2014 qualifier live from Kingston on Sept. 7.

Wednesday's Mexico-USA friendly, dubbed the "Aztecazo" for the shocking U.S. win at Azteca Stadium, drew 9.4 million viewers who tuned in to all or part of the coverage on Spanish-language Univision, making it the No. 1 broadcast program in primetime among adults 18-49, adults 18-34, men 18-49 and men 18-34 -- beating ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC.

In an 82-page opinion issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber ruled for U.S. Soccer in the six-year case ChampionsWorld v. U.S. Soccer, throwing out the testimony of ChampionsWorld's expert witness, therefore rejecting its antitrust claim and issuing a summary judgment in favor of U.S. Soccer.

Fox Soccer's new one-hour nightly newscast, Fox Soccer News, debuts Friday at 10 p.m. ET. The show replaces Fox Soccer Report as Fox Soccer's nightly soccer roundup, complete with a full conversion to HD, new hosts and for the first time on-the-ground reporters in Britain covering the biggest story lines from the Premier League and European competitions. Late updates will be included in the West Coast edition of the show at 10 p.m. PT.

By Paul Kennedy Olympic soccer's popularity among young viewers was evident in social media. Twitter reported that soccer had the most Twitter conversation with well over 5 million Tweets. Other popular sports: swimming, the track & field, gymnastics and volleyball.

Thursday's USA-Japan Olympic gold-medal match was watched by 4.35 million viewers and had a national household rating of 2.74, making it the most-watched and highest-rated event ever on NBC Sports Network.

It's just FIFA's good fortune that the next Women's World Cup will be held in Canada. Think of all the USA-Canada friendlies the Canadians can host between now and 2015 to build up interest in the next women's world championship. The television numbers from Canada for Monday's epic semifinal on TSN blew away those in the USA on NBC Sports Network.

How popular is the U.S. women's national team's quest for a third straight gold medal? The audience for Saturday's 3-0 win over Colombia on NBC Sports Network peaked at 3.346 million, higher even than the peak audience for Sunday's men's basketball team game with a peak audience of 3.036 million.