I love radio. I worked in radio for many years. I listen to radio (mostly on my phone or on satellite in the car). You can call it audio. You can call it streaming. What I hope you won’t be calling it in the near future is irrelevant.  

It feels like some in the soccer business don’t quite understand its value. In turn, they don’t make much of an investment. And in some cases, they’re getting a return commensurate to what they are essentially “not” investing in.  

Many MLS teams have a radio broadcast. It is impossible to know what kinds of investments are being made by the clubs. But we know the league hasn’t been much help. When the league moved to Apple TV with its MLS Season Pass they signaled that they would offer the local team’s radio announcers, both home and away, as an alternative to the national announcers. 

That turned out not to be. What was offered then, and continues to be, is the home team’s radio/audio feed. There is no option to listen to your team’s announcers when your team is on the road.

All other major leagues in America – NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL – invest in local broadcasts and in some form make those broadcasts available to their fans around the world.

“Every professional team has home-and-away radio,” said Glenn Davis, who for many years was the TV voice of the Dynamo. He now does an audio-only feed for the MLS Season Pass games played in Houston. “You want (radio) and it makes you look big-time. And without it I think it does kind of hurt relevancy and it does take a little poke at the professionalism.”

MLS’s TV package only offering the home team announcers is perplexing. You would think the most fervent supporters of your team would like to sync their local announcers to the video when their team is on the road. They are likely to be sitting in the stadium for the home games. 

“I think the uptake would be even higher if the away games were broadcast,” said Brad Feldman, who broadcasts all the New England Revs games on 98-5 The Sports Hub in Boston. “A good portion of those loyal viewers are probably season members, season-ticket holders.

“A good percentage of people want that connection.”

That is it. The local fans make a connection. They develop a relationship with the local announcers. It’s familiar. They are the friendly voices, they are neighbors. 

“Yes, I think that’s a big one,” Davis tells me. “I mean you and I are kind of from the older school. Local is very important. The team has to be held to the fire in a fair way. But in a fun way as well. I don’t think it has been good for the local fan. It’s kind of sad to me.”

Feldman said, “I don’t want to inflate the importance, but I live in a sports market where those connections have historically been very, very close and very much a part of the fabric of the sports culture, and the various teams’ culture and legacies.” 

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Options

Fans of every sport have plenty of choices, for the games, for the media content, for building a relationship with their favorite team(s).

D.C. United announcer Dave Johnson says the competition is not just for the dollar, it’s for your time. “If you’re going to invest the time in something,” he said, “you want to know that whoever you’re investing time in is investing time back. And that means making the experience as optimal and interactive as possible.”

And that, Johnson says, means giving the fans both home and away radio on MLS Season Pass. 

Not surprisingly, Feldman and Davis are of the same mind. Feldman says his club is ready to make a greater investment if the league would make those road games available. 

“The Revs front office has been very clear about this,” he said. “If the league went to a model where the away radio call was an option … then the New England radio announcers and producer would travel to all the away venues.”