An indication of soccer’s growing popularity on ESPN: the net is sending one of its longest-tenured anchors to Mexico City to cover a match it will not even televise.
ESPN will devote extensive coverage to Wednesday’s USA/Mexico World Cup Qualifier, despite not having the rights to the match. The net will air SportsCenter special at 3:30 PM ET, a half-hour before the start of the match. Josh Elliott and John Harkes will cover the match from ESPN studios in Bristol, and ESPN veteran Bob Ley will join Alexi Lalas on-site from Mexico City.
The 6 PM ET SportsCenter will include postmatch coverage with Ley, Lalas and reporter Pedro Gomez.
While ESPN will air a half-hour pregame show, mun2 — which owns English-language rights to the match — will “offer just a few minutes” of pregame coverage. Telemundo, mun2’s sister network, will air an hour-long pregame prior to its Spanish-language telecast of the match.
ESPN will begin its coverage of the USA/Mexico qualifier on Monday, with Gomez reporting from the U.S. team’s training camp in Miami.
