US World Cup road qualifiers on beIN Sport USA

Posted Thursday, August 23, 2012 by YAHOO Sport

Add U.S. road World Cup qualifiers to the soccer games many American television viewers may not be able to see.

The new beIN Sport network said Wednesday it had acquired rights to U.S. road qualifiers this year and next along with all other qualifiers in the North and Central American and Caribbean region for the 2014 tournament, except for matches involving Mexico.

The network, launched last week by the Al-Jazeera Sport Media Network, is available to only about 7 percent of U.S. television households - the 8 million homes that receive DirecTV and the DISH Network.

While the U.S. Soccer Federation owns rights to its home qualifiers, Traffic Sports USA bought rights to the road games from the CONCACAF nations that owned them, and Traffic resold them to beIN.

The U.S. has remaining road qualifiers this year in the semifinal round at Jamaica on Sept. 7 and at Antigua and Barbuda on Oct. 12.

In qualifying for the 2010 World Cup, eight matches on ESPN2 averaged 787,000 viewers and two matches on ESPN averaged 734,000. The U.S. qualifier at Guatemala in June was resold from Traffic to Integrated Sports Media and available only on pay-per-view.

The new network also has rights to Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A, France's Ligue 1 and England's second-tier League Championship. In addition, it has rights to South American World Cup qualifiers and the 2015 Copa America.