Fox Sports Ready to Prove It Can Put on Major Event With Women's World Cup
By Mike Cardillo
If you’re ordering at a restaurant and want to wash your meal down with a soda pop, odds are you’re going to ask your server for a “Coke” without thinking twice. Pepsi can try as hard as it likes, but it’s not Coke.
When it comes to American sports television in 2015 ESPN is Coke, no questions asked. ESPN is the default standby channel for bars, gyms, airport lounges, and tire store waiting areas. ESPN can be found in nearly 95 million households in America and thanks to nearly 40 years in the business can set the sports agenda in the country.
For the last 22 months, Fox Sports 1 has tried to play the role of Pepsi to ESPN’s Coke with varying success.
On Saturday, the 2015 Women’s World Cup kicks off in Canada. The tournament represents the first major “event” for Fox since its cable channel went live. Yes, Fox aired the NLCS last fall, many prominent NASCAR and UFC events, along with the UEFA Champions League, but the Women’s World Cup is the first month-long, Olympic-style event for the channel. Fox will spread its game and studio coverage of the tournament’s 52-matches across three channels, while turning another — Fox Soccer Plus — into a Women’s World Cup channel.
There was a time — think the mid-80s — when ESPN was an easy joke for late-night comedians for its array of Aussie Rules football, wrestling and yachting programming. Now, ESPN can put nearly anything on its airwaves — Jon Gruden talking to quarterbacks in a camper — and use its massive, multimedia platforms to get American sports fans talking.
Does Fox Sports have the ability draw that kind of water over the next month? As crazy as it sounds in the age of on-screen cable/satellite guides, there are likely still many American viewers who don’t readily know where Fox Sports 1 resides on the dial.
If we use ratings as a be-all, end-all, Fox Sports 1 remains a mixed bag. Last Sunday, as an example, per TV Sports Ratings, the NASCAR Dover 400 was the top-watched sports program of the day. On May 28th, a Thursday night without any NBA or NHL playoffs and one baseball game that started before 10 p.m. on the East Coast, you have to scroll through over 30 programs before you find something rated on Fox Sports 1.
Live “appointment television” sports content is the best way to hold viewers, so perhaps a month of Women’s World Cup coverage spread across network Fox, FS1 and FS2 could be the sustained, daily destination programming the cable channels have lacked.
“It’s a great time to educate the American public who we are at Fox Sports and Fox Sports 1,” said Rob Stone by phone on Tuesday night, a few minutes after wrapping four hours of live Sepp Blatter resignation cover. “It’s a great time to educate gyms and bars and restaurants and your neighbors down the street where we are and what kind of product we’ve been giving out and how good that product is.”
Fox will air a record 16 games on its broadcast/network channel. Kickoff times range from 1-10 p.m. ET and are mostly accommodating for viewers across America. The semifinals and finals will be in prime time with a 7 p.m. start, and the majority of key matches fall between the 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. window. Monday the U.S.-Australia game starts at 7:30 p.m.
Consider, too, the on-going FIFA corruption scandal and Blatter resignation could spur interest. If nothing else, FIFA’s name is in the news and the curiosity of who — if anyone — from the FIFA hierarchy will attend the opening ceremonies on Saturday could draw a few more viewers.
As counter-intuitive as it might sound, some of Fox’s relevancy might be tied in part to ESPN. When ESPN owns the rights to an event, it goes all in — take the College Football Megacast as a prime example. When the Worldwide Leader doesn’t have the rights, its level of coverage is comparably muted, as in the Olympics, or infamously, the NHL. Daytime SportsCenter is the default background noise in many places, so the more the WWC chatter there is in Bristol, the more chance viewers might turn to Fox when the games begin. Per ESPN PR, it will still devote plenty of space to the tournament, mainly centered around the United States team.
“We all know the power the four letters have over the sporting world and they’ve earned it,” said Stone, who worked numerous World Cups for ESPN before joining Fox. “They’ve been at it for a long time. We’re just the new kids on the block trying to find our turf and expand that turf. The folks in Bristol realize we have a lot of good people here who can put on some quality television in front of and behind the camera. I respect ESPN and have great friends there and wonderful memories. I’m not intimated by them. I adore them. They gave me some great chances. I love the fact we’re given an opportunity to raise our level to the level that the public perceives ESPN is at presently.”
And Stone presents perhaps the biggest challenge for Fox: public perception. For all its warts, ESPN’s coverage of the 2014 Wold Cup in Brazil was routinely excellent. Fox, on the other hand, might not be afforded the same benefit of the doubt either by notorious fickle soccer fans or media critics looking to pounce 140 characters at a time.
Is the Women’s World Cup the platform to change these perceptions? Stone thinks so, whether or not his optimism is proven true remains to be seen.
Fox brought in Alexi Lalas from ESPN and has given a bigger on-air “insider” role to Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, along with numerous hires for its studio coverage including the Sky Sport’s Kate Abdo, who’ll share host duties with Stone. Former USWNT defender Heather Mitts and former Mexican international Monica Gonzalez are also among the studio analysts. All told 28 of Fox’s voices for the tournament have 1,300 international caps among them.
On top of that, Fox constructed a massive, open-air studio on the Vancouver waterfront to anchor its coverage, which has the network beaming. It remains to be seen whether it will be as well-received as ESPN’s faux cabana in Rio last summer.
“A lot of people have a certain bias against Fox and Fox Sports. There’s been a lot of prejudging of what our quality really is and I think a lot of people will change their tune within a few minutes of watching our presentation of this summer’s World Cup,” Stone said. “You’re going to hear the call of American voices calling the greatest women’s sporting event in history and, you’re going to say to yourself and I guarantee this, ‘damn, these guys did it and they’re doing a hell of a job.’ Without hesitation, people and their expectations right now I think are unfairly low for what we can provide them and those expectations will be surpassed and I think we will gain a new level of respect in the sports broadcast business and from new viewers out there as well.”
Although this does feel like a bit of the company line from Stone, it’s worth remembering the evolution of ESPN’s World Cup coverage for the men’s tournament this century. Japan/Korea in 2002 was a late-night/early morning afterthought. Germany in 2006 felt halfhearted. By 2010, 2011 and 2014, the broadcasts from South Africa, Germany and Brazil were routinely excellent, compelling, and comprehensive with John Skipper overseeing ESPN as it poured all its power into the event, to engage viewers of all levels with excellent studio programming spearheaded by Bob Ley and an array of world analysts.
Fox paid $425 million in 2011 and owns the American English-language rights to the much-maligned 2018, 2022 and 2026 men’s World Cups, so like it or not, it will be the voice of international soccer in America going forward. That run of broadcasting the major international tournaments to an American audience begins Saturday.
“I think if people go in with an open mind, they’ll only have one conclusion to take away and it will be that Fox Sports did this event correctly and the sport of soccer is in good, safe hands with them for years to come,” Stone said.