Azteca America: Our most important and relevant investment, soccer, is already yielding results

With just under six months as president and CEO of Azteca America, Manuel Abud is pleased with the results and optimistic about the prospects of the network in the U.S.He says changing soccer programming to Friday nights has yielded great results, boosting the network to first place in some markets in that time slot, regardless of language.“Azteca’s most important and relevant move is soccer. We launched a very important project for the media-buying community, which we labeled Friday Night Fútbol, with two soccer matches per night. This is the cornerstone of our programming,” said Abud.He pointed out that mid 2015 would start to see the results of the changes made at the network. “One of the things I discussed from the beginning both with Gustavo Guzmán (deputy advisor of Azteca), and with Ricardo Salinas (President and CEO of Grupo Salinas), was that a turnaround of the scale we intended would not happen overnight. Arriving at the place we want to be will take some time,” added Abud.