With Fox winning the rights to the 2018 and 2022 Men's World Cup that means that they get the 2015 and 2019 Women's World Cup as part of the package. One bright side in this is that since Fox has the rights to WPS, now they have a HUGE reason to help the league stay afloat and promote the USWNT players. ESPN did a great job this year and I enjoyed most, if not all, the people they used on the telecast. It will be interesting to see who Fox hires for the games and in what channels they will air. ESPN are the masters of cramming things down your throat, so I am a little worried on how much effort Fox will put into marketing the event. USWNT games in Canada have potential to draw big big numbers since the games will most likely be on the afternoon or primetime, so hopefully Fox realizes that and give it a big push.
I just saw this and wondered if the WWC was part of the deal so thanks for clearing that up. I'm not sure how this will affect TV coverage. More importantly I wonder what this will do for friendlies for the women's game. It seemed like ESPN played more games on TV leading up to the WC but since they don't have the right if we will see a decrease in games.
I'd hope Fox would up their online viewing game. espn3 was *very* useful to me for the watching of games when I was not near a tv (aka at work). I'd actually have prefered for ESPN to keep the rights. But here's hoping Fox will give a sh!t about the women's games. And the U20 women's games.
I can't afford spending $ for extended cable packages to get Fox channels. Comcast already gouges me enough. Prefer streaming sources I can record like ESPN 3. Not psyched about this change
I am not either. ESPN and ESPNII did a terrific job with the coverage of the mens and women's world cups the past few years. The camera's and the commentators are what made it such a delight for me in addition to see the wonderful games. I'm afraid I have no access to Fox stations as I refuse to pay for premium channels that I will never use. As a result, I am actually very sad this choice was made and hoped ESPN would keep doing what they did best.
It kind of bothers me how most all the news articles on Fox's winning bid only mentions the men's WC ('18, '22) when the WWC final did better than any soccer event on ESPN ever. You'd think it would be considered an important "get" as well. It looks like the women will be Fox's guinea pigs with their coverage in 2015. Please be better than the coverage in WPS.