Franky Benítez

Saturday night, while the rest of the world worried about baseball playoffs (not talking about Red Sox), college football (sorry, @CesLSU that your Tigers lost to the Gators), or just whether they wanted to go out and party, I worried about one thing and one thing only: locating a broadcast of the US/Honduras World Cup Qualifying match in Honduras. A win, and the US would go to South Africa for World Cup. I was determined to watch it and used Twitter to find out where.

First stop was @USSoccer, the official Twitter account for all US Soccer updates. This account is not a bad one, and at 8:00 PM EST (the game was on at 10), I found out that the game would NOT be broadcast in the US because Honduras, as the host country, did not sell broadcast rights to ESPN or other American sports stations. No, in a deal that probably made the government more money, Honduras sold the rights to a closed circuit company that would broadcast only in select bars around the US. US Soccer gave me that info, and even though I live 20 minutes from the CBS Scene in Foxboro, I didn’t want to drive out by myself and hang out in a bar. I wanted to see the game in my own home.

So, I searched and searched and found two streams, one on UStream and one on Justin TV. The UStream was the actual live broadcast from Honduran TV and it had its highlights and lowlights:

Highlight: the broadcast captured how loud and nasty the stadium was to the American side. It was world soccer at its best, and the US was in the cave of the beast. I was also fascinated by the political commercials being transmitted during the game. Given the chaos of Honduras these days, it was a study in politics and sports. I would venture close to 100% of Honduras was watching the game. Talk about a captive audience.

Lowlight: The Honduran announcers were bad. I mean, really bad. I mean, they would say things like (loosely translated): “Every Honduran citizen must join us here to push their national team on and will a goal for them.” The announcers were horrible. The worst homer announcer in the US would sound like Switzerland when compared to these guys.

So, after having enough of the Honduran feed, I found a great feed in English with amazing video quality from Justin TV.

And I tweeted about it. Yes, I tweeted the game as if I were broadcasting the game to other tweeters and followers. Yes, I tweeted every minute for a whole two hours, and even when my main account @julito77 got frozen by Twitter (that is for another day, because Twitter is missing the boat with that), I tweeted the updates from one of my company accounts @PublishGroup. In the end, the game was AMAZINGLY TENSE and THRILLING, and the Americans prevailed, 3-2.

I was extremely happy to have provided other US Soccer fans on Twitter with minute-by-minute updates of the game. In fact, even when I thought I was tweeting too much, I kept getting tweets from others who thanked me for what I was offering and to keep on giving such detailed updates. As a former sportswriter, I am fascinated by the ability to communicate information in 140 characters (probably 120, once you include hashtags like #ussoccer and #usmnt), and last night proved no different.

Do I like to twittercast? You bet I do.

Do I think it is overtweeting? Nope, because in the end, my constant tweets were providing valuable information to people who were interested in the game.

I got to connect with some great US Soccer fans as well. All the better, since we have to keep it going for South Africa next year!

BTW, also a bit proud that I tweeted results before the US Soccer Twitter account. HA! Yeah, I am quick, too. Bring it. GO USA!!!!