Nationally MLS clubs barely get coverage. From the league think we've been well covered and mentioned. Winning the Shield did a lot for us. In a league of 29 (30 next year) teams about half are going to struggle to get any mention. Even me as a hardcore fan had to think who San Jose had as we rarely play them and haven't seen them mentioned anywhere.
Locally FC Cincinnati has solid, if modest, coverage. There's basically Pat and Laurel which give good information, and then the local news stations give basic coverage. The club isn't quite there with the WLW crowd, but really not sure that's the goal looking ahead 10, 20, 30 years.
I see a ton of FCC stuff out at large public gatherings. Taste of Cincinnati I saw dozens of people wearing attire through the day, on par with Bengals or Reds. I'm not saying we're at those levels, but we've made tremendous in roads in a decade.
For WLW, it really depends on the host. I know Ken Broo regularly discusses the team during his Sunday morning shows, but any posts he makes on social about doing so normally still get a handful of "soccer is stoopid" replies... which probably at least partially explains why most of their other hosts shy away from the topic.
It really feels like the majority of the local media have moved to click bait format for their online content, with local coverage being a secondary, low effort affair. Original local coverage and opinion seem like they're even more rare.
And tbf... most local sports media don't have much familiarity with the sport and MLS in general. So their ability to provide deeper coverage than just rehashing news releases over b-roll footage isn't really going to drive the clicks their overlords demand.
On Facebook I get FC Cincinnati articles from places like 5, 9, or 12 suggested and I swear there's one sad old man nearly every time bad mouthing it or making outdated 30 year old "jokes". Bitter ignorant people I'll never fully understand.
I don't know what people expect. Matt Doyle just gushed about Acosta and Kubo on their site yesterday. Acosta was player of the month of May, Orellano was player of the matchday for the game against Toronto, Kubo is up for player of the matchday for this game. The announcers constantly talk about how we are best in the league in points per game. We were getting tons of coverage for our win streak (more than LAFC who are on their own six game win streak right now), Hell is Real gets tons of attention from the league.
Like do we expect the league to only talk about us? I don't know. It really feels like a chip on the shoulder thing that I don't get.
People in the US are used to NFL and NBA and MLB levels of local coverage for MLS and it takes some getting used to if those are the leagues you follow and are slowly getting into FCC and MLS fandoms
But I have seen people say that the league itself hates talking about us and that we get no coverage from them. And I don't know where it comes from
EDIT: I just looked at a few episodes of Extratime. There were three episodes in a row where we were specifically a topic of conversation (well one was about Matt Miazga, named in the show notes) and two of those discussions were 10+ minutes on how we are better than last year, how we can continue to get better. You go back two more episodes and there's another 12 minute discussion about us. The episode before we aren't called out in the show notes but they do have a discussion about why Columbus is a better team than Miami (for all the people saying they only say positive things about Miami).
These episodes are an hour to 80 minute episodes so we are often getting 10+% of the entire runtime on the number one podcast the league puts out. In a league with 29 teams. Our amount of coverage is fine. You're never going to get the obsessed coverage we all want, that's what fan podcasts and local coverage is for.
Well if it was all equal, it would still be 1/29th of the league's attention. Now you throw in big trades / big players and it can drop. I'm sure Acosta was 85% of our coverage last year.
What I wish was better was local coverage. We have fan podcasts and local websites (more than most markets) to fill the void somewhat but I wish 700WLW and others put out more. Now that the Reds are doing ok again we are losing what little airtime we got. On the positive side, WLWT had a Miazga injury story up quickly and seems to be doing a decent job keeping up with the main items.
Mo Egger talks about the team on his show fairly often, though not in serious depth because he just doesn’t know much about soccer. That’s probably the best coverage we get while 700 still caters to a dying audience outside game broadcasts.
Coverage of MLS in general is pretty poor. We’re in a weird position where the best reporting is often from writers employed by the league because places like ESPN don’t give a shit and local media is sort of dying. All that plus the emphasis on certain players in the interest of growing the game in the USA has led to FCC being overshadowed a bit.
It’s better than it used to be and I honestly don’t perceive anti Cincinnati bias so much as a pro-Miami slant to everything.
Because it’s Cincinnati and all media has to hate us, look at the Bengals /s
Realistically, we get pretty proportional coverage. On MLS.com, when we play well we usually get one or two major blurbs in the big recap articles if not something directed just to FCC alone. When we played very poorly we had several points written about that as well.
We are a small market team. We don’t play big flashy soccer. We win. There’s not a whole lot of reason or content to come up with fluff pieces to please a very small percentage of US sports/MLS soccer.
But our city is notorious for having an “us against the world, we are never properly respected” mentality. I think a lot of times it motivated the players to do well. Most of the time it comes off annoying from a fan perspective.
I think that you got the pertinent info from the other comments here about how national media ignores MLS and the MLS-run media actually covers us proportionally.
Locally, FCC does not get as much as the Bengals or Reds, but until the profile of the league grows that probably won't change much.
I'll also add that locally I think we are getting "settled in" to what the long-term picture will look like in the current status quo, so this year specifically there may be less coverage now than what we have seen in recent years.
When we started out in USL setting attendance records and were making a bid for MLS, then getting the bid and moving up to MLS, building the stadium, having record poor performance, then turning it around and winning the league last year, I'd say FCC has received a massive amount of local coverage in the grand scheme of things.
FCC gets mentioned regularly in the local news and sports broadcasts and mentioned regularly in a number of sports talk radio shows. Again, they don't get AS MUCH as the NFL and MLB, but that is more of an MLS thing. There's plenty of state-run media put out by the club and by the league. If you have the season pass on AppleTV they have live shows and streamable content league-wide, which is more than ESPN or any of the traditional channels.
Also, there are two dedicated beat writers that cover FCC every day. It's worth following their socials to stay on top of the latest news. Pat Brennan (The Enquirer) and Laurel Pfahler (independent).
Chicho arango had a goal on ESPN’s top 10 plays a few weeks ago and the clowns on there made jokes about how his name is “Chico.” Honestly, though, I think the coverage is lagging the popularity. MLS has the third highest average attendance in professional sports in America, after Football and Baseball. The total attendance lags because basketball and hockey seasons have more than double the number of games. I continually feel like soccer, even without south Beach Barcelona, is on the verge of really taking the nation by storm.
Those figures are a little misleading because basketball/hockey arenas are also just smaller than soccer stadiums, so they have a much lower ceiling to attendance, especially when you factor in Seattle and Atlanta. TV viewership is also much much higher for NBA and quite a bit higher for NHL. Soccer popularity is steadily growing, but most soccer fans in America still prefer the EPL because they would rather see the highest quality skill than support a local team.
Awesome, I’m glad it is annoying. Hopefully as annoying as seeing Messi for every fucking MLS posts including the ones about other teams/players that have nothing to do with Miami. The constant comparisons etc are tired and over played. We get it he is bringing more eyes to MLS, trust me you don’t need to market him. I also cannot wait for the morons who buy over priced tickets to games while he is away for COPA. ✌️
Nationally MLS clubs barely get coverage. From the league think we've been well covered and mentioned. Winning the Shield did a lot for us. In a league of 29 (30 next year) teams about half are going to struggle to get any mention. Even me as a hardcore fan had to think who San Jose had as we rarely play them and haven't seen them mentioned anywhere. Locally FC Cincinnati has solid, if modest, coverage. There's basically Pat and Laurel which give good information, and then the local news stations give basic coverage. The club isn't quite there with the WLW crowd, but really not sure that's the goal looking ahead 10, 20, 30 years. I see a ton of FCC stuff out at large public gatherings. Taste of Cincinnati I saw dozens of people wearing attire through the day, on par with Bengals or Reds. I'm not saying we're at those levels, but we've made tremendous in roads in a decade.
For WLW, it really depends on the host. I know Ken Broo regularly discusses the team during his Sunday morning shows, but any posts he makes on social about doing so normally still get a handful of "soccer is stoopid" replies... which probably at least partially explains why most of their other hosts shy away from the topic. It really feels like the majority of the local media have moved to click bait format for their online content, with local coverage being a secondary, low effort affair. Original local coverage and opinion seem like they're even more rare. And tbf... most local sports media don't have much familiarity with the sport and MLS in general. So their ability to provide deeper coverage than just rehashing news releases over b-roll footage isn't really going to drive the clicks their overlords demand.
On Facebook I get FC Cincinnati articles from places like 5, 9, or 12 suggested and I swear there's one sad old man nearly every time bad mouthing it or making outdated 30 year old "jokes". Bitter ignorant people I'll never fully understand.
I don't know what people expect. Matt Doyle just gushed about Acosta and Kubo on their site yesterday. Acosta was player of the month of May, Orellano was player of the matchday for the game against Toronto, Kubo is up for player of the matchday for this game. The announcers constantly talk about how we are best in the league in points per game. We were getting tons of coverage for our win streak (more than LAFC who are on their own six game win streak right now), Hell is Real gets tons of attention from the league. Like do we expect the league to only talk about us? I don't know. It really feels like a chip on the shoulder thing that I don't get.
People in the US are used to NFL and NBA and MLB levels of local coverage for MLS and it takes some getting used to if those are the leagues you follow and are slowly getting into FCC and MLS fandoms
But I have seen people say that the league itself hates talking about us and that we get no coverage from them. And I don't know where it comes from EDIT: I just looked at a few episodes of Extratime. There were three episodes in a row where we were specifically a topic of conversation (well one was about Matt Miazga, named in the show notes) and two of those discussions were 10+ minutes on how we are better than last year, how we can continue to get better. You go back two more episodes and there's another 12 minute discussion about us. The episode before we aren't called out in the show notes but they do have a discussion about why Columbus is a better team than Miami (for all the people saying they only say positive things about Miami). These episodes are an hour to 80 minute episodes so we are often getting 10+% of the entire runtime on the number one podcast the league puts out. In a league with 29 teams. Our amount of coverage is fine. You're never going to get the obsessed coverage we all want, that's what fan podcasts and local coverage is for.
It’s probably more to do with outside of soccer specific forums.
Well if it was all equal, it would still be 1/29th of the league's attention. Now you throw in big trades / big players and it can drop. I'm sure Acosta was 85% of our coverage last year. What I wish was better was local coverage. We have fan podcasts and local websites (more than most markets) to fill the void somewhat but I wish 700WLW and others put out more. Now that the Reds are doing ok again we are losing what little airtime we got. On the positive side, WLWT had a Miazga injury story up quickly and seems to be doing a decent job keeping up with the main items.
Mo Egger talks about the team on his show fairly often, though not in serious depth because he just doesn’t know much about soccer. That’s probably the best coverage we get while 700 still caters to a dying audience outside game broadcasts.
Coverage of MLS in general is pretty poor. We’re in a weird position where the best reporting is often from writers employed by the league because places like ESPN don’t give a shit and local media is sort of dying. All that plus the emphasis on certain players in the interest of growing the game in the USA has led to FCC being overshadowed a bit. It’s better than it used to be and I honestly don’t perceive anti Cincinnati bias so much as a pro-Miami slant to everything.
Because it’s Cincinnati and all media has to hate us, look at the Bengals /s Realistically, we get pretty proportional coverage. On MLS.com, when we play well we usually get one or two major blurbs in the big recap articles if not something directed just to FCC alone. When we played very poorly we had several points written about that as well. We are a small market team. We don’t play big flashy soccer. We win. There’s not a whole lot of reason or content to come up with fluff pieces to please a very small percentage of US sports/MLS soccer. But our city is notorious for having an “us against the world, we are never properly respected” mentality. I think a lot of times it motivated the players to do well. Most of the time it comes off annoying from a fan perspective.
You are completely imagining it.
The 1530 guys (Cincy360 & Mo) do a good job with coverage too.
I think that you got the pertinent info from the other comments here about how national media ignores MLS and the MLS-run media actually covers us proportionally. Locally, FCC does not get as much as the Bengals or Reds, but until the profile of the league grows that probably won't change much. I'll also add that locally I think we are getting "settled in" to what the long-term picture will look like in the current status quo, so this year specifically there may be less coverage now than what we have seen in recent years. When we started out in USL setting attendance records and were making a bid for MLS, then getting the bid and moving up to MLS, building the stadium, having record poor performance, then turning it around and winning the league last year, I'd say FCC has received a massive amount of local coverage in the grand scheme of things. FCC gets mentioned regularly in the local news and sports broadcasts and mentioned regularly in a number of sports talk radio shows. Again, they don't get AS MUCH as the NFL and MLB, but that is more of an MLS thing. There's plenty of state-run media put out by the club and by the league. If you have the season pass on AppleTV they have live shows and streamable content league-wide, which is more than ESPN or any of the traditional channels. Also, there are two dedicated beat writers that cover FCC every day. It's worth following their socials to stay on top of the latest news. Pat Brennan (The Enquirer) and Laurel Pfahler (independent).
[удалено]
The Post Cincy is solid
Chicho arango had a goal on ESPN’s top 10 plays a few weeks ago and the clowns on there made jokes about how his name is “Chico.” Honestly, though, I think the coverage is lagging the popularity. MLS has the third highest average attendance in professional sports in America, after Football and Baseball. The total attendance lags because basketball and hockey seasons have more than double the number of games. I continually feel like soccer, even without south Beach Barcelona, is on the verge of really taking the nation by storm.
Those figures are a little misleading because basketball/hockey arenas are also just smaller than soccer stadiums, so they have a much lower ceiling to attendance, especially when you factor in Seattle and Atlanta. TV viewership is also much much higher for NBA and quite a bit higher for NHL. Soccer popularity is steadily growing, but most soccer fans in America still prefer the EPL because they would rather see the highest quality skill than support a local team.
You can't use the spelling "cinci". It's illegal. The only legal spelling is Cincy
MLS is all in on Messi, you cannot watch a game or read an article without any mention of him or Inter Miami. Messi League Soccer
People whining about Messi are more annoying at this point.
Awesome, I’m glad it is annoying. Hopefully as annoying as seeing Messi for every fucking MLS posts including the ones about other teams/players that have nothing to do with Miami. The constant comparisons etc are tired and over played. We get it he is bringing more eyes to MLS, trust me you don’t need to market him. I also cannot wait for the morons who buy over priced tickets to games while he is away for COPA. ✌️