Author: Jonathan Tannenwald

Soccer fans in this country have spent decades paying to watch games online. And for just as long, broadcasters have used that money to bankroll the rights fees for those games: from England’s Premier League on NBC’s Peacock to Spain’s La Liga on ESPN+, the Champions League on CBS’s Paramount+, and MLS on Apple TV.

But what happens when a European league and an American outlet decide to make almost all the games in a season available for free?

That is the plan hatched by Germany’s Bundesliga and Versant’s USA Sports, the platform created when Philadelphia-based Comcast spun off most of its cable TV channels at the start of this year.

From now until the summer of 2031, Versant will put around 30 games each season on the USA Network cable channel, and stream the other roughly 270 free of charge. The deal starts this weekend with Saturday’s German Supercup game between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund (2:30 p.m., USA Network), the top two teams last season. (It’s usually the league winner against the German Cup winner, but Bayern holds both titles.)

“We are combining reach and also revenues with this deal,” Bundesliga executive vice president for the Americas, Robin Austermann, said of a contract worth $100 million over the five seasons. “When talking to Versant over the last couple of months, we definitely saw the excitement for the league. … It fits very well to our overall strategy to be a super accessible league.”

If you think there must be a catch to this somewhere, well, you’re as cynical as anyone else in soccer. So here’s the explanation of how things will work:

Versant’s streaming platform is Fandango, which a lot of people know for being a place to buy movie tickets. In fact, there are two Fandango apps: one for going to theaters, and Fandango Stream for watching at home or on your phone.

The latter, available on a range of mobile and connected-TV devices is where the soccer games will be. The Bundesliga section of the app is front and center, and USA Sports president Matt Hong promised it will remain easy to find.

“We’re newly relaunching the [streaming] service as Fandango Stream, and the Bundesliga rights came available coincidentally at the same time,” Hong said. “And so as a way to establish a cornerstone live sports property for Fandango Stream, we decided that the Bundesliga would be perfect for that.”

He touted that fans don’t even need to register for the Fandango platform to watch games there.

“The thesis behind Fandango Stream is to make it as easy as possible — not only free, but as easy as possible for consumers,” he said. “The Bundesliga is a great property, because it both services our pay-TV strategy and business with the minimum of 30 matches on USA Network; but we liked having the entire package. And that leaves us with the [remaining] matches that we can use as a way to existing Bundesliga fans, new Bundesliga fans, and new users to Fandango.”

Inside the tech side, and the money

Fans might think there’s another catch, and they’d know from experience. Other platforms that have streamed games for free have inserted ads during broadcasts. For example, beIN Sports has a traditional subscription, TV-authenticated streaming platform, and free streaming channels with ads. Some of those ads interrupt live action, so viewers might miss a goal or other major event.

Hong, a longtime soccer fan himself, said that won’t happen on Fandango.

“We will 100% preserve the user experience that our viewers on USA Network are accustomed to, that soccer fans are accustomed to, which is not to distract from or have there be any missing of the live action,” he said. “That’s our commitment.”

Austermann also said there is “not just a commitment from Fandango, but that’s part of our policy in general that the matches itself are not interrupted by advertisements.”

This doesn’t mean there won’t be any tech hiccups, especially out of the gate, since the Bundesliga will be the first live sports property on the platform. But the principle is there.

Hong intends to leverage USA Sports also being a home of the Premier League, with 170 games a season. The intent is for most of the TV channel’s Bundesliga games to be at 12:30 p.m. on Saturdays, a time slot that often gets the weekend’s biggest game there — the topspiel, as Germans call it. That means a tripleheader on an average Saturday with Premier League games at 7:30 and 10 a.m., then the Bundesliga game afterward.

USA also will continue to carry NBC’s Premier League studio show, though the network isn’t going to do its own Bundesliga studio show for now, partially because of how fast this deal came together. For this season, the league’s world-feed show will do the job in halftimes instead. (The Bundesliga has a studio in Guadalajara, Mexico, where it distributes content for North American viewers.)

And Hong assured that in-game highlights will be posted to USA Sports’ social platforms. The Bundesliga’s previous U.S. broadcaster, ESPN, was criticized for not doing that, especially when an American player scored a goal.

Where is the revenue coming from to make this deal work? Versant’s $20 million per season is lower than the $30 million per season ESPN paid from 2020 to 2026.

There’s also a separate Spanish deal with Telemundo for a reported $10 million per season for three years. That makes up the difference, but still leaves the Bundesliga flat at a time when the Premier League earns $450 million per season from Comcast and Versant.

That is even more notable in a year in which the World Cup brought unprecedented attention to soccer. Some big names from the tournament play in the Bundesliga, including England’s Harry Kane (Bayern Munich), France’s Michael Olise (Bayern), and the United States’ Malik Tillman (Bayer Leverkusen).

“We will see the results — all of us, the entire industry, will see the results now in the coming months,” Austermann said. “That’s what we’re actively working on with our marketing team, with the marketing team from Telemundo, with the marketing team from Versant: How can we transfer the casual soccer fan from the World Cup into a season-long Bundesliga fan.”

The team with “PHILLY” on its jersey, and a collar that looks like the Spectrum used to, got in a brawl with Lionel Messi and his fellow superstars. A guy from Bridesburg pulled a wrestling move, and his 16-year-old brother was ejected after a one-on-one scrap that included him taking a punch.

In the first half, that same 16-year-old set up a goal. In the second, he made a dazzling run across the field that ended with a yellow card foul from an opposing defender who used to play for Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur.

Then there was the 20-year-old from Morrell Park who hit a perfect cross for the opening goal. Later on, he drew a foul off Messi with the kind of play that would have had fans howling if Messi did it.

There also was the 18-year-old from Harrisburg who used his 6-foot-7 frame to dust Luis Suárez and score a goal off a free kick. He did a lot of other good stuff, too, but that play was an easy highlight.

At the end of the night, the Union were on a five-game unbeaten streak.

So things must be going well, right?

Maybe not. And not just because they still haven’t beaten Messi in six tries.

This team is still in 13th place in the Eastern Conference. The fact that a 5-10-5 (20 points) record gets you within four points of a playoff spot should be a criticism of MLS being too generous, not an endorsement of quality. (It will only get worse next year if, as the Guardian reported Thursday, the league expands the postseason field to 20 of 30 teams as part of a realignment to divisions.)

When the Union visit Austin FC on Saturday (9 p.m., Apple TV), they’ll be fortunate to have Cavan Sullivan — their top creative force this season — since the suspension that comes with his red card surprisingly was overturned. They also were lucky that Quinn Sullivan did not get any supplementary discipline.

It will also be the team’s third game in seven days, which means some lineup rotation was always likely to be in order.

And the forecast calls for near-100-degree temperatures at kickoff, and a high during the day of 107. MLS pushed the start time half an hour later to try to dodge the worst.

It’s a winnable game for the Union on paper, as Austin also has a 5-10-5 record. But the circumstances don’t just include that, or the fact that the schedule is pretty soft until October’s visits to Chicago, Nashville, and Cincinnati.

It includes Bruno Damiani not scoring on a first-half breakaway Saturday night, and Milan Iloski fluffing an even better chance off a gorgeous give-and-go with Cavan Sullivan with the score tied in the 71st minute. The latter will be the real standout moment of Wednesday’s game for some people, even more than the brawl, because Iloski is the Union’s leading scorer and he usually finishes chances like that.

Damiani, meanwhile, came into this game looking like he’d finally cleared his head of the mental block that held up his scoring form. Then he didn’t get it done on that breakaway, and also couldn’t stick home the rebound off that Iloski chance.

Even Sullivan fired just wide in the 78th minute with the score tied, 2-2. Had that shot gone in, it would have broken some things on the internet.

Instead, the full house at Subaru Park expected Miami to jump on all those misses and score, whether the thousands of fans in Messi’s pink or the rest in Union blue.

It felt just about miraculous when Messi twice put free kicks from just outside the 18-yard box into the Union’s defensive wall instead of into their net.

If all of this feels too cynical for the moment, here’s a Southampton, Bucks County native who went to William Tennent High and La Salle, and had a great view of all the action.

“We went against them and faced them up the right way, and I thought for the 90 minutes we were the better team,” Ryan Richter said. “So we need to take confidence from that, not get ahead of ourselves as far as, are we a good team? No, let’s focus on Austin, and focus on putting a good performance together on the back of this one.”

It will be a different kind of test, but still a test between players’ fatigue and the weather. The interim manager is on guard for a letdown.

“On short rest, it’s easy to get up for a game against Miami at home — that’s always easy to bounce back and be up for that game,” he said. “Let’s make sure we’re able to get up again for this one. That’s going to be a real test of our mentality, and the way that we can approach this game.”

Richter added that his goal is “again going for a win away from home.”

Understanding all the context, it will be a fine feat if the Union get it.

The Union still can’t solve Lionel Messi, but this time it was a heck of a game.

It was a 2-2 tie, played before a standing-room-only crowd at Subaru Park with thousands of pink-clad fans rooting for Messi’s Inter Miami. They got what they came for, but the home team was the better side for much of the night.

Indiana Vassilev scored the opener (5-10-5, 20 points) just 11 minutes in off a terrific team play. Cavan Sullivan sprung Frankie Westfield down the right wing, and he hit a cross that had Vassilev and Bruno Damiani charging toward Miami’s net. The ball soared over Damiani’s head, but Vassilev was right there to stick it in against a team he used to play for.

But just two minutes after Damiani failed to finish on a breakaway, Messi helped Miami (11-3-6, 39 points) tie the score in the 21st. He chipped a pass to Luis Suárez, who nodded a header down for one of Inter’s top young players, Dániel Pintér, to finish near the goal line.

Messi then struck for the lead in the 26th, cutting left on Kai Wagner with a classic move and curling a shot around a frozen Nathan Harriel. That was the Argentine legend’s sixth goal in six career games against the Union. (Perhaps surprisingly, the only one of the contests where he didn’t score was the Union’s 6-4 loss in Miami in May. He had two assists instead.)

For as much attention as was on Sullivan all night — and he justified a lot of it with a dazzling run that drew a yellow-card foul from ex-Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur defender Sergio Reguilón — another young Union sensation scored the equalizer.

It was Neil Pierre in the 58th, heading in Milan Iloski’s free kick with a dive on the goal line at the near post. As narratives go, an 18-year-old American centerback prospect beating Suárez to a ball is a pretty good one.

Iloski then put the ball in the net in the 61st off another free kick sequence, and the crowd erupted. But the goal was taken off via a video review that caught Pierre offside when Kai Wagner hit the initial service. (The reversal was correct, as frustrating as it was, with Pierre’s position clearly shown on the broadcast.)

Union interim coach Ryan Richter made his first substitution in the 68th, a withdrawal of Vassilev for Quinn Sullivan.

The Union failed at another breakaway attempt in the 71st, this time with Iloski and Cavan Sullivan combining on a pretty give-and-go. But Iloski couldn’t get his shot past Dayne St. Clair, and Damiani couldn’t stick the rebound past a sliding Reguilón.

It genuinely could have been 4-2 Union at that point — 5-2, even, had Pierre stayed onside on that free kick. But as has so often been the case over the years, the Union didn’t have Miami’s quality of talent up front.

So it felt inevitable when Wagner tripped Messi just outside the 18-yard box for the second time on the night. But stunningly, Messi shot low into the Union’s wall both times.

Ezekiel Alladoh and Alejandro Bedoya entered in the 82nd for Damiani and Jesús Bueno, then had to help their teammates endure minutes of stoppage time.

The game was capped off with a melee after Quinn Sullivan went down in the box in what was officially the 101st minute. He got into a wrestling-esque scrum with Ian Fray, which led to a scuffle among the teams.

Within that, Cavan Sullivan and Yannick Bright got in a shoving match that included both players putting hands on each other. At one point, it looked like Bright aimed and landed a punch. They were both red-carded, and the Apple TV broadcast showed security restraining Bright from going toward the Union’s locker room in the tunnel.

Sullivan will now miss Saturday’s game at Austin FC. It remains to be seen too if the league’s disciplinary committee will levy fines or further suspensions for the fracas after its review of the match on Thursday.

NEW YORK — There were plenty of opinions on the penalty kicks that whistle-happy referee Sergii Demianchuk called in the first half. But there wasn’t much disagreement that the Union deserved to be down two goals at intermission to New York City FC, because they’d been outplayed for more than just those two moments Sunday night.

It was easy to figure interim manager Ryan Richter would have some choice words for his players in the locker room, and he revealed at the end of the night that he did.

“One or two things tactically, but it was more about challenging the guys to just play better,” he said after the Union’s 3-2 victory. “To give more, to be more connected when they didn’t have the ball.”

Richter admitted to “challenging some guys individually,” and said at first that he didn’t want to name names. But that attempt didn’t last long, because the first player he was asked about turned out to be one of them.

It also happened to be Cavan Sullivan.

This was his first start against NYCFC, and his first time on the field at Yankee Stadium since a one-minute cameo as a rookie in 2024. It isn’t his fault or the Union’s that outsiders put a little more on this matchup than some others with him. But they do, and not just because of the famous stage.

The Pigeons are owned by Manchester City, the English Premier League giant that Sullivan will move to when he turns 18. So if he does something big against their New York siblings, it gets noticed in a few more places.

And if NYCFC keeps him quiet, as happened for much of the first half, that gets noticed, too.

The outside chatter isn’t Richter’s business, either. All he wanted to do was hold Sullivan to the same standard he has kept all along. And he made it clear that Sullivan wasn’t meeting it.

“I can say he’s one of the guys at halftime that I really challenged,” Richter said. “Because we know about his talent. It’s incredible the things that he can do, the mentality that he has. But he can’t only play when the ball is at his feet. Every game is not going to be a situation where he is getting in these positions, can go at guys, create from there.”

He continued on, giving the media what felt like much of the speech he gave the locker room.

“He’s going to have to find the game in different ways sometimes,” Richter said. “And that was more the challenge: You have to position yourself for second balls. You have to recover in the game. You have to find the ball in the middle of the field in tight windows, and turn and make plays from there. And you have to just, yeah, play better, because you’re capable of it, bring everything at a higher level.”

Three minutes into the second half, Sullivan won the foul for the free kick that delivered the first goal, then headed Kai Wagner’s service on to eventual scorer Danley Jean Jacques. Just over 20 minutes later, he broke past New York’s defense to receive Milan Iloski’s pass and set up Bruno Damiani for the equalizer.

But it wasn’t just those two plays. It was a tackle a few seconds before the counterattack that led to Damiani’s eventual winner. It was three tackles total, one interception, seven duels won from 11 contested, four passes into the attacking third, and six shots.

It was jumping into Quinn Sullivan’s arms after the older brother sprang free on the left and assisted Damiani’s winner. And at the end of the night, it was leading the team over to the cluster of Union fans along the first-base line to celebrate a wild victory.

Cavan Sullivan leads the Union over to the away fans’ section to celebrate the win:

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— Jonathan Tannenwald (@jtannenwald.bsky.social) August 16, 2026 at 8:12 PM

“He’s a guy that, for a young man, that he can accept this in the moment, take it, and then put together what he did in the second half. And then have the unselfish play that he made on Bruno’s first goal — that’s what makes him different,” Richter said. “It’s this maturity and this mentality. With a lot of the guys, I’m proud of them, but I’m really proud of the way that he responded to what I think was not his best first half.”

Did it matter a little more in this game than others? Probably not, especially compared to what’s coming next: Inter Miami’s visit to Subaru Park on Wednesday, the first time Sullivan will play against Lionel Messi on the Bridesburg native’s home turf.

But you can be sure outsiders put a little more meaning into Sunday night. On top of the New York-to-Manchester connection, the calls are growing fast for Mauricio Pochettino to pick the 16-year-old for the U.S. men’s national team’s upcoming friendlies.

That, too, is for later. Right now, the Union (5-10-4, 19 points) have just two days to prepare for their biggest game of the year, and Jovan Lukić will be suspended due to yellow-card accumulation.

“For the coach and the coaches, a lot of work,” Richter said of having just two days to prepare. “For the players, a lot of recovery.”

Damiani delivers again

Admit it: When Sullivan sent that pass to a wide-open Damiani for the equalizer, what was on your mind?

Was it Surely he can’t miss this?

This is a safe space, so you can say yes.

No doubt the critics are breathing easier now, even if the striker still has a ways to go to make up for all his misses before the last few days: two goals Sunday, and the first since February the previous Sunday against Necaxa in the Leagues Cup.

“The run that he was in prior to scoring in the Leagues Cup, you could feel the weight come off of him in that moment,” Richter said. “And tonight, like his goal against Necaxa, tonight was two striker’s goals: run to the right spot, be available for your teammate, one-touch finish, bang, easy business.”

If the Union are to make the playoffs, few things could help more than Damiani scoring consistently.

“The work that he does outside of that, that always makes the team better,” Richter said. “But his job is to put the ball in the back of the net, and to see him do that twice tonight in a big moment was really good.”