Fox pushes English soccer alongside NFL

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SportsWatch

Sept. 15, 2011, 2:20 p.m. EDT

Fox pushes English soccer alongside NFL
Network hopes for win-win in pairing world’s and U.S.’s favorite sports


By Sam Mamudi, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — For tens of millions of sports fans, Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter are all about one thing: watching football. Starting this weekend, Fox is hoping some of those viewers can be lured to watch that other sport known as football, as it pairs soccer matches with its National Football League games.

On Sunday, Fox’s network channel will show the English Premier League’s Chelsea play at Manchester United. Depending on whether the local Fox station shows an early or late NFL game, the soccer will be broadcast at 2 p.m. Eastern or 4:30 p.m.

The move pairs the world’s most popular sport with America’s favorite game, and a small but surging television product with one of TV’s biggest offerings.


If Fox can create new soccer fans from among the millions of NFL watchers it will doubly benefit: A big hit on network TV could lead to a future of soccer-football double-headers on days when it only shows one NFL game; and even an incremental rise in soccer interest should help its two Fox Soccer cable channels.

“There are some pretty big hurdles for them to overcome [to make soccer mainstream in the U.S.], but that’s not to say they shouldn’t try, and it’s not to say that this won’t increase the sport’s popularity,” said Adam Swanson, an analyst at SNL Kagan. “You need something to drive its growth, and this could be it.”

Fox is owned by News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWS) , which also owns MarketWatch.

Soccer viewership, especially for European and international matches, has been rising dramatically in recent years, making it one of the fastest-growing televised sports in the United States.
Read more about soccer's explosive growth. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/champions-league-paces-soccers-us-gains-2011-04-06

It’s a trend that’s gathered pace. With the English Premier League season just four games old, Fox is reporting booming audiences, and says ratings for the early-season EPL games on Fox Soccer among the coveted 18- to 34-year old demographic are up 76% from a year earlier. Fox Soccer has seen its ratings record broken twice in the past six months, most recently when 954,000 people watched the United States play Mexico in June’s Gold Cup final.

“A few years ago games on Fox Soccer had between 50,000 and 70,000 viewers; now it’s more like 100,000,” said Stephen Master, vice president of Nielsen Sports. “And they haven’t been doing this for too long — it takes time to build these names up and really build their brand among casual soccer fans.”

The broadcaster has already benefited from showing soccer on its main network. May’s UEFA Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona was seen by 2.6 million people on Fox. Showing EPL games on Fox could give that competition a huge shot in the arm, especially for the games that will follow an earlier NFL broadcast. Swanson noted that the viewership of a program is often retained for about 15 minutes into the next show.

That means that on days when it airs the soccer match after its football game, the network would have the opportunity to capture some of the 19 million or so people who routinely watch NFL games.

“It’s an opportunity to introduce these teams to free-to-air in more than 100 million households,” said David Nathanson, head of Fox Soccer. “It’s a unique opportunity for us, and will broaden exposure for all our properties.”

That kind of reach is currently beyond the main Fox Soccer channel, which is available in 40 million homes.

Fox’s approach isn’t a new tactic. For decades TV networks have been introducing new shows around established ratings winners. More recently, networks have been using airtime to promote their cable content. Swanson noted that when NBC (NASDAQ:CMCSA) shows golf it heavily pushes the Golf Channel, and one reason Major League Soccer recently signed with NBC was that, while most of its games will appear on the NBC Sports Network, it will also feature on the broadcast network. Read about MLS’s NBC deal.

A boost to Fox Soccer’s ratings can help the channel, and its parent, in several ways beyond advertising. A strong and growing audience could help get the channel into more homes. It could also help raise its affiliate fees. A recent Sanford C. Bernstein research note, citing SNL Kagan data, said Fox Soccer receives 17 cents for each household; the Golf Channel gets 27 cents, while motor-racing channel Speed receives 22 cents.

Fox will show four EPL games this season, though just one, on Super Bowl Sunday, will be aired live. The other three will be broadcast as-live after first airing on Fox Soccer. Eric Shanks, co-president of Fox Sports Media Group, told MarketWatch that if the games are a ratings success, there’s a chance the broadcaster could in future sell EPL-NFL Sundays as a package to advertisers.

It remains to be seen how well the move will work. While soccer’s ratings are rising, they’re still dwarfed by ratings for major U.S. professional and college sports. There’s also the business challenge of selling advertising for a sport that is played in two long chunks and doesn’t have timeouts.

“No one wants to show 45 minutes of uninterrupted content,” said Swanson.

Shanks noted that, for example, FSC occasionally has strips of advertising across the bottom of a screen during a game.

“Part of the attraction of soccer for the viewer is knowing you’ll get uninterrupted action,” he said.

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=A2EFAFA0-DE20-11E0-A65A-00212803FAD6
 
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They appearantly don't realize that the football fan will turn the channel to the game THEY want to watch.
Exactly, football fans are used to using their remotes when watching multiple football games. They'll quickly use it to turn the channel away from soccer.

Especially if CBS is showing a football game, hell they'll even switch it golf.
 
As to what is shown, IMHO, it will not work, as soccer remains the sport of the next generation, four generations and counting.

However, the business side of this is interesting. Fox remains different in sports than the other networks. It retains its vestigial history from when it was founded. The "Big 3" have a long history of carrying all sorts of niche/minor/second tier, etc (not meant as a knock on those sports, I am a fan of many of those). Fox does not. It has shown big events (NASCAR, NFL, MLB, and NHL) and not anything much else. If one of those sports is not on, you local Fox will be showing infomercials.

Perhaps this is a signal that Fox is going to be more of a bidder in the future for other things as they come open.
 
The match Fox showed today is HUGE. Manchester United and Chelsea. Two of the top clubs in the world. It's a good move to try to expose your NFL audience to that content. Even if only 5% of your lead in audience watch it, it's still good exposure for what is a niche sport in the US. I've DVRed the match and am going to watch it once I'm done with yard work and my kid has gone to bed.
 
The match Fox showed today is HUGE. Manchester United and Chelsea. Two of the top clubs in the world.
Doesn't matter. To a viewing public that doesn't watch/care for soccer, a game between 2 bad teams looks just as good as a game between 2 good team (probably better as there would be more scoring).
 
No matter if the NFL Fans care or not, this is a sign of Soccer's growth in the US. First its the Champions League Final, now this. maybe some day Fox will show a game every saturday morning from February until the end of the season
 
No matter if the NFL Fans care or not, this is a sign of Soccer's growth in the US. First its the Champions League Final, now this. maybe some day Fox will show a game every saturday morning from February until the end of the season
not really the soccer moms won't know where to find it
 
I have the Fox Soccer Channel HD. I know where to find it, and usually a good game is on, either live or tape delay. I've become a Manchester United fan.
 
from http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/20...n-u-s-with-nearly-2-5-million-viewers/104606/

HISTORY-MAKING DEBUT:

CHELSEA – MANCHESTER UNITED IS MOST-WATCHED

PREMIER LEAGUE MATCH EVER IN U.S.



Nearly 2.5 MM Tune-In to FOX, FOX Soccer and FOX Deportes



Los Angeles -- Sunday’s first of three taped-delayed Barclays Premier League matches this season on FOX scored big on a combination of FOX Sports Media Group outlets. Manchester United’s 3-1 defeat of Chelsea is the most watched BPL match ever in the US, with a combined audience of 2,486,000 viewers on FOX Sports, FOX Soccer and FOX Deportes, according to figures released today by Nielsen Media Research.



Sunday’s match on FOX posted a 1.0 household rating with 1.6 million viewers, a .4 with 456,000 viewers for the live match on FOX Soccer and a 4.2 with 430,000 watching the Spanish-language telecast live on FOX Deportes. It was also the top program of the day among all Spanish sports programs with a A18-49 audience of 323,000 and the second-highest rated match ever on FOX Soccer among 18-34’s.



The record-setting tape-delayed Premier League match on FOX is second in total audience to this year’s LIVE UEFA Champions League Final, also on FOX and FOX Deportes (4.2 million for FC Barcelona vs. Manchester United), and its total audience of 2.5 million eclipsed that of the LIVE 2010 Champions League Final on FOX and FOX Sports en Español (2.2 million for Inter Milan – Bayern Munich) and the 2009 match between Manchester United and Barcelona (2.1 million) on ESPN
Chelsea


The top-10 markets for FOX Sports taped-delayed Chelsea at Manchester United match: New Orleans (10.2); Raleigh-Durham (3.7); Greensboro (3.3); Richmond (2.8); Birmingham (2.6); Washington, DC (2.6); Greenville, SC (2.4); Memphis (2.4); Charlotte (2.2); Louisville (2.2); and Pittsburgh (2.2).


I think that's better than NBC's NHL Games
 
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