2009-2010 Premier League season banner

Late last week ESPN officially acquired the rights to broadcast the early Saturday Morning English Premier League game (typically 7:45am CST sometimes 9am CST) and the Monday afternoon game (usually 2 pm CST) in the United States.  Even better news, the games are in HD are you listening Fox Soccer Channel?

The debut of the EPL on ESPN featured perennial power Chelsea v. Hull City, minus the service of Jozy Altidore, who was still in the states waiting for his work visa to go through.  The game received very good ratings considering the circumstances.  ESPN did not announce the deal until about 12 hours before game time, and most of you would have looked on your cable or satellite guides and seen that there would be a hunting show or Bass fishing in the time slot.  Acctully my Dish Network guide still says Fishing and hunting this Saturday morning too, so Dish Network hasn’t caught on.

For the past few years I have been relying on a few peer to peer TV sites and ustream’ers out there on the internet to stream pretty much any game I could image online these days, but the quality would normally be sub par and the chance that the stream would go down at least once was very likely.  The down fall of watching streaming games is that I would have to watch games live.  So having the luxury to sit down and turn on ESPN makes for a very nice way to start my Saturday morning coffee, or sleeping in and catching it on my DVR whenever I’m ready.

EPL TV Schedule in the US thru November 2009

Here is how ESPN introduces the 2009/2010 English Premier League season in the UK:

Here’s the Video, its right after they cut off Pudge right at the beginning.

Makin' it Rain @ the Rangers game