Arsenal-Manchester United to air on American terrestrial television

For the first time ever, a Barclay's Premier League match will be shown live on United States broadcast television. And it will take place in N5.

In the run-up to the NFC Championship Game on January 22, Fox will show Arsenal-Manchester United at the Emirates Stadium on their main station, meaning that basically everyone in the United States with a television can watch it. Fox's encore presentation of the Chelsea 1-2 Liverpool match in November garnered around 1.67 million total viewers (again, for a game shown as a rerun), while last year's Champions League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United (the second club football game ever broadcast live in the US on a terrestrial network; the 2010 final between Inter Milan and Bayern Munich was the first) got 2.6 million viewers. The actual number of viewers to expect for this game is hard to predict, as there are a lot of variables (where the two teams are at the time of the game, storylines Fox can use, the fact that it will be on ahead of one of the biggest gridiron football games of the year), but I would guess there will be a fair number of viewers.

Just so this sinks in, I'm going to give it its own paragraph, because to me it's a really cool thing to think about:

The first ever live, over-the-air broadcast club football league match ever shown in the United States will be an Arsenal game.

NOTE: I found the press release via this tweet, RTed by 7amkickoff.