Changes to BT 90 focus as we enter the 2024 US domestic seasons
Beyond the 90’ is revamping our coverage of US and European professional leagues this season.
This is a natural evolution given where our readership has taken us. This is a reader-supported and driven publication and we’re pivoting towards what our readers preferences are and what has generated the greatest number of eyeballs since we’ve started this site.
USL, NISA and summer leagues
We will bring league-wide wraps up and commentary on USL each Monday. More details on this new column will be revealed next week.
NISA coverage will be deepened to cover teams across the country. There are a lot of good stories around NISA that we potentially ignored last year while focusing on Club de Lyon’s problems. This year we pledge with our increased bandwidth to cover those.
We will no longer bring the Florida Soccer Saturday Night reports on Florida USL and NISA pro teams instead rolling that coverage into our broader pieces. These Saturday Night wrap ups will return in May, for NPSL, USL League Two and W League teams in the state.
However, we will still continue to report on Tampa Bay, Miami FC and Club de Lyon as “beats” during the week under The Florida Soccer Report banner. But match summaries and discussions will be folded into the larger columns about USL and NISA.
We plan energetic and extensive coverage of the USL Super League when it launches in August, and in the lead up to the season plan to focus heavily on the Tampa Bay Sun and Fort Lauderdale United FC.
We will also cover regional adult-amateur leagues on both the women’s and men’s sides as closely as possible.
EUROPE
Additionally, in terms of European coverage we plan to increase coverage of La Liga and Ligue Un in the near future. These are leagues we see a coverage void for unique perspectives, and while the Bundesliga is Kartik’s favorite league, the pieces we’ve written on it have the fewest views of anything we’ve published since launching this site. But we do want to cover Serie A and the Bundesliga in the future as well, but need more bandwidth to do so.
Premier League, EFL, MLS and NWSL
We have increased our bandwidth as a result of the decision to discontinue regular coverage of MLS and NWSL outside of off-the-field matters and competitions involving other leagues (Concacaf Champions Cup and US Open Cup for MLS, currently nothing for NWSL). We’ve already more or less abandoned coverage of English football, which was the original aim of this site when launched.
In terms of the Premier League an over-saturation of information exists and that’s something we learned quickly after launching the site. The coverage of football/soccer in this country tends to skew toward three leagues : The Premier League, MLS and NWSL. We aim to fill a void in the market and therefore are focusing on other things.
These decisions can be revisited in the future but for now, we’re going to devote our resources to covering the other leagues in the United States soccer landscape. MLS and NWSL enjoy much coverage elsewhere and anything we deliver will either be repetitive or not circulate well. In addition, due to the recent referee lockout and US Open Cup controversies, we’re not terribly enthusiastic about MLS right now.
MLS has some wonderful players, coaches, fans and team executives. To follow their stories, I suggest following the excellent team-focused websites and podcasts that exist throughout the web of soccer online in the United States.
As for NWSL, they have a devoted legion of writers that cover the league and start times of games generally conflict with lower division US games. Additionally, we plan as noted above to focus much of the website's attention on the USL Super League when it launches.
As for the EFL, we’ve had a harder time than usual keeping up this season and had already discontinued what was a weekly column during the 2022-23 season. We’ll still cover lower division English football when we can, but it’s not a driver of the site as we originally intended.
However, everything we do involves an opportunity cost and we want to do as much as we can to cover USL, NISA and NPSL, so this seems a logical step to take.
Evolving platform
When launching Beyond the 90’ we made certain assumptions about fandom and what readers wanted us to focus on. Through trial and error, we’ve learned the primary focus of this site should be US lower division soccer and governance issues. That was not the focus when we launched but was supposed to be simply one facet of our coverage.
But as noted we’ve responded to what the readers and subscribers want. This is the beauty of being a reader-supported publication that takes no advertising or corporate dollars. We’re able to pivot to what you want to read. I do apologize to those who have stuck with us since the beginning hoping in particular for insights into the Premier League. Much like NWSL and MLS, many other options exist for this coverage.
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