Lee Smith/Reuters
A few days before what is still the marquee fixture of the English season, Liverpool’s in-house television network showed a documentary called “Us and Them.” It is meant as no criticism of the channel in question — LFCTV — and its equivalents at clubs across Europe that it felt like something of a departure.
Like club websites, team-specific channels know their market. They are not concerned with trying to win over casual, channel-surfing viewers (not that anybody channel surfs anymore). They are not competing with HBO or the BBC or other mainstream networks.