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Before anyone panics or posts cries of anguish, we want to assure fans that at the time of this post, no change to AFL coverage is known. Should the situation ever change, we will advise fans with reliable, confirmed information on this site as we have done for the past 18 seasons. Now that this is out of the way...

As many readers are aware, Fox announced last week that Fox Soccer Channel will cease operations on August 17th and morph into a new youth oriented channel to be called FXX. Soccer coverage will move to the new Fox Soccer 1.It was previously announced that FS1 will be the basis of a Fox effort to compete with ESPN and will be the new name for the Speed channel. No announcement has been made about the future of Fox Soccer Plus. There is no reason FSP cannot continue as the home of premium coverage of soccer and other sports including Australian football but without the main FSC the long term future of FSP is very uncertain. FSP has a contract with the AFL and it is reasonable to think that any coverage on FSP will move to another channel if FSP also closes at some point. We will post updates should the situation change.

Article last changed on Wednesday, April 03, 2013 - 9:52 PM EDT


Comments

Posted by Jake (not verified) on April 03, 2013

Strange (or perhaps not) how less prone to anxiety I am about this now that the AFL has an improved online video service. My feeling is the regular season game quality has been a bit lower than NAB Cup games, although I'm not sure why that would be the case. Having said that, it's better than the online service last year, and better than the SD signal on FSP. I'll still hope for a stable home (in HD) on some network after this season whether it be a Fox channel or another. There's still nothing like watching a game in HD. And fan growth in North America will be harder to come by without a channel where someone might stumble across it in much the same way I did when I became a fan a few years back. (Thank you ESPN2.) To me FSP has been a good home partner in terms of giving us two games consistently each round. Hopefully once the restructuring of the Fox sports brand is complete, there will still be room for the AFL.

I was about to cancel my FSP subscription last week because Verizon flatly refuse to broadcast it in HD (without any explanation of why they can't/won't when Time Warner can and do.) Then I heard that the steaming service has its troubles so I'm waiting to see. Re a future stable home for AFL in HD - don't count on Verizon. They may respond to a landslide of complaints from subscibers paying HD fees for an SD broadcast but they certainly aren't interested in disucussing it intelligently with a single subscriber. Please, if you are a customer of Verizon and as unhappy as I am about the quality of the broadcast we are paying for send them a nasty-gram.

Posted by admincms on April 20, 2013

To further update this story, AFANA has received assurances from sources we trust that no matter what happens with Fox Soccer Plua, coverage will continue on a Fox Sports channel for the remainder of their contract with the AFL. To the extent you can ever be comfortable with any sports coverage, we no longer have cause for worry.

-Rob
AFANA Chairman Emeritus and Site Admin

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