If you lived in Mexico and wanted to watch Sunday night’s game between Club León and Club América, you had two options. You either had to subscribe to Fox Sports Premium for $110 Mexican pesos (around $6 U.S.) or watch it for free on YouTube through Marca Claro.
Kind of a no-brainer decision, right?
Well, halfway into the first half and with more than 500,000 viewers, Marca Claro’s stream on YouTube was shutdown due to a copyright claim made by Fox.
This was clearly an abuse of power and the stream was up a few minutes after.
Marca Claro has been streaming sports, including soccer, in Mexico for quite some time now. It owns the rights to stream games from León and Pachuca, both teams that Fox Sports also owns the rights to.
With Marca Claro pulling so many viewers and turning people away from subcribing to Fox's premium service, Fox Sports thought it was a good idea to shut it down.
Marca Claro's response? "Deal with it"
The commentators for Marca Claro were also aware of the copyright claim and used the game as a way to send some shots toward the people at Fox.
“We're on Marca Claro and Claro Sports is completely free; we don't charge here. We don't charge a single peso. You can watch for free and it will stay that way," said Ramón Barrenechea, commentator for Claro Sports. "Even when they want to shut us down, we're still here, completely free for you guys."
Ouch.
Twitter vs. Fox Sports Premium
As if people didn’t hate Fox enough already, Fox decided to copyright claim the stream again, and in the final minutes of a game that was 2-2 and with León a man down.
This caused utter anger and distress among the people watching the game, probably sentencing Fox into an even deeper audience turmoil.
Is this the new norm for watching Liga MX in Mexico?
Watching Liga MX, especially in Mexico, has become harder with streaming services and cable television exclusively streaming the games of teams in the league.
This problem is evident not only to the fans but to players like Guillermo Ochoa, who said “people don’t know where to watch a game if they’re not in the stadium.”
If you’re a fútbol fan and enjoy watching Mexican soccer, you will have to subscribe to services such as Televisa, TUDN, Vix, TV Azteca, Afizzionados, ESPN, Star+, Claro Sports, Fox Sports and Fox Sports Premium in order to not miss a thing.
A bit excessive when you’re not watching Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo play every weekend.