Real Monarchs push to produce their own broadcast for home games

The Real Monarchs will be bringing back their broadcast duo in Landon Southwick and Tom Hackett tonight as the Monarchs face off against St Louis CITY2 tonight.

With the inaugural season of MLS Next Pro — a newly formed second division league run by Major League Soccer — teams lost control of their local broadcast with the league instead opting for an artificial intelligence operated single camera system. Many fans feel there has been a significant drop in quality, and events such as goals and corner kicks have been missed on the broadcast.

The Real Salt Lake ownership have made their desire to control their own local broadcast known to the league, who in turn have agreed to have something of a test run tonight to see how it goes. RSL’s new owners were surprised at the lack of quality of the broadcast in the Monarchs’ season opener against Seattle, and the org has been working on a solution since then.

Tonight they’ll use a five camera setup with Southwick and Hackett returning to their commentary roles on the broadcast. Should the league approve this setup, which is similar to what we’ve seen for the past several seasons, RSL would cover the cost of the broadcast. This would only be for home games, which also matches what the Monarchs did while they were still in the USL Championship. All MLS Next Pro matches are available for streaming on the league’s website. It’s unclear whether or not other teams in MLS Next Pro would follow suit in order to provide a higher quality broadcast to their viewers.

You can stream tonight’s game at https://www.mlsnextpro.com/.