As Minnesota United FC prepares for its debut season in Major League Soccer next March, one key piece of unfinished business is the club’s partnership to broadcast matches on television.

This season, the Loons have continued to ramp up their in-house broadcast staff, which now produces more matches at a higher quality than in previous years. United entered a new partnership in 2016 to live broadcast 31 of 32 home and away matches, some 30-minute pregame shows as well as possible postseason matches on MY29, a subsidiary of Fox 9. That deal continues Saturday night when United plays at Miami FC in a North American Soccer League match.

Beyond the national TV deals with ESPN, Fox Sports and Univision, Major League Soccer’s 20 current teams have a wide range of individual partnerships, often based on local market dynamics. New York City FC, a 2015 expansion franchise, has a partnership with YES, a large regional sports network. Before its second MLS season in 2016, Orlando City SC announced a multi-year deal with WRDQ TV 27, a smaller Cox Media Group channel.

United President Nick Rogers said Thursday it would be premature to comment on possible TV partners for the 2017 season and possible retention of current play-by-play broadcaster Chris Lidholm, color commentator Alan Willey and sideline reporter Eric Nordquist.

“Clearly, we’ve had TV relationships to this point, so as we get bigger, we want those relationships to become more robust and the product we are producing to become even better,” Rogers said.

Fox Sports North has not had discussions with United, said Becky Ross Mielke, a spokeswoman for the regional sports network said Wednesday. FSN currently broadcasts Twins, Timberwolves and Wild games to more than two million homes across the Upper Midwest.

Rogers said club leadership has been talking to many people about TV partnerships. He shared an anecdote about a “well-regarded” MLS club that turned down a more lucrative TV deal in favor of a smaller offer because the latter option meant a deeper penetration into households.

“They view what they are doing on their broadcast is essentially a 2-, 2 1/2-hour-long infomercial for what happens in their stadium,” Rogers said. “The couple of other bucks they may have gotten from this cable network wasn’t worth it to them for the eyeballs they would lose in the process.”

ORIGINS

When owner Bill McGuire rebranded United FC in 2013, the viewing options within NASL had been hard on the eyes. NASL started in 2011, and the main avenue to watch then was UStream, an online platform.

“It was pretty bad,” Rogers said. “The broadcasts were often a single camera, standard definition, no instant replay, really grainy stuff.”

One of Rogers’ first initiatives was to hire a senior director of video productions because “the visual of the game is the main product,” he said. He picked Brad Baker among 200 applicants.

In 2013, United’s games were mostly online, besides two home matches, one on FSN and one on Channel 45, an offshoot of the local ABC affiliate. In 2014, United had a limited deal with Channel 45 to broadcast most of the home matches at the National Sports Center in Blaine. In 2015, most away games were added to the Channel 45 lineup, but some games were aired on tape delay.

“Minnesota seems to be relatively unique,” said Neal Malone, NASL director of public relations. “Generally what we see across the league is that people in charge of the broadcast like Brad in Minnesota are actually employees of an outside production company and not the club itself.”

About 75 percent of Baker’s workload involves the TV broadcasts, with about 25 percent producing videos such as the spoof reaction after goalie Sammy Ndjock threw the ball in his own net in a game. He has a staff of three, which now includes a motion graphics artist to produce the in-stadium show for home matches at the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium next year.

“When I came in, it was very important to Nick and ownership to have the best quality stream and broadcast,” Baker said. “Bill made a significant capital investment for us to build our own mobile control room. … It wasn’t anything else that anyone had done in the league.”

All NASL teams now have local TV deals, and there are a few national TV contracts with CBS Sports Network and others. United’s only game not on My29 will be on CBS Sports Network next Wednesday. But the quality of the local feeds and number of camera angles can vary from a few in, say, Edmonton to 12 in Tampa Bay. Baker said United has used five cameras during home games this season.

“Brad and his staff have done a great job professionalizing the presentation,” Malone said. “I know they’ve put a lot of time and effort and have invested a lot of TLC into the graphics they put together.”

United will maintain a premium on having the ability to craft the storytelling of the game and what happens around it. Rogers said they’ve all enjoyed the opportunity to have the “NASL sandbox to play in while we are getting ready for the big time.”

“What is great about MLS is that each team in their own way can still creatively control the broadcast,” Baker said. “I think that is an important piece for us to look at moving forward. We definitely don’t have any firmed-up TV plans for next year yet. I think we kind of like the model that we are on now, and I don’t think there will be too much drastic change going forward.”