ZURICH -- Fox Sports won a bid for the rights to televise the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to American television viewers. Fox will carry the 2018 event from Russia and the 2022 event from Qatar. Telemundo won the bidding for Spanish-language rights in the United States. Bidding was held Wednesday and Thursday and the announcement came Friday. ESPN and Univision lost out after holding rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. The value of the new deals was not disclosed, according to The Associated Press. ESPN and Univision paid a combined $425 million for the existing deal. An announcement is expected on Friday. Fox will own the rights to all FIFA events from 2015 to 2022, including the men's World Cup in '18 and '22; the women's World Cup in '15 and '19; and all Under-20 and Under-17 matches. ESPN, which will televise the 2014 event in Brazil, said in a statement: "We made a disciplined bid that would have been both valuable to FIFA and profitable for our company, while continuing to grow our unprecedented coverage of the World Cup and Women's World Cup events. We were aggressive while remaining prudent from a business perspective. "ESPN remains committed to presenting the sport of soccer at the highest level across our platforms with coverage of the UEFA European Football Championship, English Premier League, La Liga, MLS and other top leagues and tournaments, including the 2014 World Cup in Brazil." http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/ne...-wins-bid-espn-nbc-televise-world-cup-2018-22
"Fox paid $425 million to win the rights to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup in the United States, and Telemundo paid $600 million for Spanish-language U.S. rights, an individual with knowledge of the bidding tells TheWrap." http://news.yahoo.com/fox-snags-fifa-world-cup-rights-espn-160321440.html Not bad at all for Fifa
A good deal for FIFA, but will it be a good deal for us? At least to me, ESPN's coverage had one thing that could never be questioned. Every single game was live on either ABC, ESPN or ESPN2. Which means for most people with cable, that meant every single game was available to them. I don't have confidence that FOX will do the same even if they wanted to. Yes they have FOX Soccer and FOX Soccer Plus, but fox soccer isn't as available as ESPN and soccer plus is a premium channel in most markets. Add to that this simple question, will fox all but completely devote the time needed for up to two or three matches a day every day during the group stage? Since they are run by the same company that thinks its okay to hack 9/11 victims' cell phones, what will stop them from saying, a la NBC and the Rugby World Cup: "Want to see the games? $24.95 each please."
Great. Crappy commentating (cannot use Sky feeds cos they do not have rights in England) and forced to pay for every game. ESPN comes with the most basic cable package and online LIVE hd stream is free. FOX is going to charge for everything except the US games (if they qualify), and the final. Also I bet online games will be on delay. There champions league coverage is crappy as it is. If Espn had Champions League could watch all games at the same time Live on TV and espn3. Ratings are gonna drop if they show games on Foxsoccer and by then everyone will be watching illegal streams online anyway. Fox better get up to speed on how to broadcast these games cos they are way behind.
Don't worry at the price they paid the games will mostly be on Fox and their ither big networks not obscure ones. My concern is that ESPN will start ignoring soccer.
As far as I know, I have all the fox networks, except for some of the regional ones. I would still be able to watch the games assuming they don't go the pay per view route (which I wouldn't discount until I see an actual broadcast schedule). My concern isn't that I will miss the games, but that the people who only care about soccer during the world cup will miss out on the games. If world cup ratings drop, that won't exactly help anyone who wants soccer to be more available to the American sports fan.
1. The tournament is 7 years away. Relax 2. FX is currently in almost as many homes as ESPN and, taking Champions League semi-finals as an example as well as college football, Fox is using FX for more sporting events. 3. Having Fox Soccer will be good for being able to properly analyze games now that they have all the highlight rights. No more just relying on heat maps and telestrators. So the games will be on Fox/FX (and maybe FSC or FSN for the 4 days of concurrent games) and the analysis will be all up and down FSC. One thing I will hope for that ESPN didn't do is to send reporters out into the field to interact with fans. ESPN did a lot of canned pieces for the WC 2010 and WWC 2011 but rarely got out into the country like Sky Sports did (and they didn't even have broadcast rights). I think Fox exceeds ESPN for the World Cup the same way they they exceeded them for the Champions League.
I'll give you the all of your points but the last. I cannot predict what fox may or may not do, especially since it will be seven years. And there really is no point in concerning myself with it now. I'm just still feeling jaded over how NBC excreted all over the Rugby World Cup, ground it into a dry pulp and then tried to sell me a piece of the pulp. The one thing I'm not sure I agree with is that fox has better treated the champions league. Aside from putting the final on broadcast television, I just don't feel that its the same as it was with ESPN. Admittedly that is more of a gut feeling on my part than any concrete complaints.
I don't understand - we went from 4 games every matchday to 16 games every matchday (6-8 without DTV) plus two 30-minute pregame shows (1:30 if you include Sky Sports News) and extended highlights and analysis from someone not named Smyth each night of on the FSR as well as the highlights show. By every definition I'd say that was better. But I will agree with you on NBC and the RWC. Not having a live showing of the games they eventually showed on NBC (including the damned final) was pretty poor. I was stream hopping the whole night. Though I will give them a bit of a break as that may have been the last of the vestiges of the Dick Ebersol Reign of Error. Versus becomes NBC Sports on Jan 1, so that's when I start blaming Comcast for any NBC Sports ineptitude. Including that horrid SNF song. Just show the damn game ffs.
Like I said its just a feeling. I couldn't care less about pre-game, halftime or postgame shows in any competition of any sport at any time, so that never crossed my mind. I will admit that I wasn't thinking about the quantity of coverage when I made my previous statement. I might concede that my displeasure with fox's coverage is based on two things, at least one of which is not the case anymore. I generally don't like the fox network and anything it touches. I may enjoy certain programs (sports and otherwise) that fox has covered or aired, but I just don't like fox itself. It has drained the life out of baseball, it overhypes its mediocre shows during every sporting event, it took all of the heart out of regional coverage on FSN and turned everything cookie cutter (at least here in NY before they were chased out), it keeps Tim McCarver in front of a microphone, it searches through crime victim's cell phones, it had glowing pucks, its greed led to a World Series being blacked out here. I fear what they might do if they think they can make a buck with soccer towards mainstream sports fans. Also, and this has changed, when fox got the rights to the champions league, I wasn't able to watch any of the games in HD for a year and that really burned me.
I've heard a bunch of people say bad things about McCarver too - I'm not a baseball fan so I only know him by the impressions others do of him overexplaining everything. WRT Fox sucking the life out of things, I've heard (and witnessed) ESPN doing that as well. MNF is a shadow of what it used to be. My NASCAR fans complain about how they ruined NASCAR. And, for me, what they're doing to college football has basically turned me off of watching any game not involving my alma mater. Their analysts are crap hires and/or buffoons capitalizing off the fact that they've been around a long time, and I absolutely hate how they move games around at the drop of a hat. Sure ESPN is ubiquitious, but I like niche. Niche means I know what to expect. And as far as hacking cell phones, I see very little connection between Fox Soccer/FSI and some rags in England. Every one of those papers over there does that. And I bet some here do as well. I will never fault Fox Sports or Fox Soccer for the actions of the (IMO) morally dubious arms of the Murdoch empire - including Murdoch himself. Again, JMO.
My concern for Fox is that they take it seriously and not treat us all like idiots. That Strahan piece before the Champions League final somehow managed to insult both fans of the game and anyone tuning in for the first time. Another issue will be whether Fox finally develops a way to provide streaming content better than they do now. I was able to watch the last World Cup at work because of ESPN3. I've tried the Fox Soccer streaming service and it is awful. Goes down anytime there is a game that has high interest level.
Clever move. The key to breaking international football big in the States is the Latin commercial market. Fox does even have to worry about whether Brazil or Argentina wins the 2014 WCup. The network can use the media hype generated by the tournament to build viewership in North and South America towards the 2018 and 2022 WCup events.
Fox does have any advantage over ESPN is that FOX has 2 free over-the-air tv channels in the local Fox affiliate and local MY network affiliate. For me that means FOX5 and MY9. Both can air WC matches while FX can handle lesser quality WC matches between lesser nations. Espn only had the local ABC affiliate and those games aired were only on weekends while you can be sure matches will be aired on the local MY network every day because their daily show lineup is weak.