Fox Sports (United States)


Fox Sports, also referred to as Fox Sports Media Group, is the sports programming division of the Fox Corporation that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by the Fox broadcast network and its dedicated national sports cable channels and radio network.
The division was formed in 1994 with Fox's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football League games. In subsequent years, Fox has televised the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, Bowl Championship Series, Major League Soccer, the USGA Championships, NHRA, WWE, and the relaunched XFL.
On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company announced plans to acquire then-parent company 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion, which included key assets such as the regional Fox Sports Networks, FX Networks Group, and Fox Sports International. Under the terms of the proposed acquisition, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, and other assets were spun off into the division's current parent company, which is independently owned by 21st Century Fox's current shareholders.

History

Establishment

When the Fox Broadcasting Company launched in October 1986, the network's management, having seen how sports programming played a critical role in the growth of the British satellite service BSkyB, determined that sports would be the type of programming that would ascend Fox to a major network status the quickest; as a result, Fox tried to attract a professional football package to the network. In 1987, after ABC initially hedged on renewing its contract with the National Football League for the television rights to Monday Night Football, Fox made an offer for the package at the same price that ABC had been paying at the time – about $13 million per game. However, partly due to the fact that Fox had yet to establish itself as a major network, the NFL decided to resume negotiations with ABC, with the two parties eventually agreeing to a new contract, keeping what was the crown jewel of the league's television broadcasts on that network.
Six years later, as the league's television contracts for both the National Football Conference and American Football Conference divisions, and for the Sunday and Monday primetime football packages were up for renewal, Fox placed a bid for $1.58 billion to obtain the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference. On December 17, 1993, the NFL selected Fox's bid and signed a four-year contract with the network to award it the rights to televise regular season and playoff games from the NFC, beginning with the 1994 season; the initial contract also included the exclusive U.S. television rights to broadcast Super Bowl XXXI in 1997. The deal stripped CBS of football telecasts for the first time since 1955.
Fox also lured commentators Pat Summerall, John Madden, Dick Stockton, Matt Millen, James Brown and Terry Bradshaw as well as many behind-the-scenes production personnel from CBS Sports to staff the network's NFL coverage.
In order to bolster viewership for the NFL telecasts, Fox parent News Corporation decided to strike affiliation deals with broadcasting companies that owned stations affiliated with ABC, NBC and CBS in order to raise the profile of Fox's affiliate body, which at the time mainly consisted of UHF stations that had little to no prior history as a major network affiliate, had weaker signals and largely did not carry as much value with advertisers as the Big Three's affiliates. During the late spring and summer of 1994, Fox reached separate agreements with New World Communications and SF Broadcasting to switch a total of sixteen stations to Fox between September 1994 and September 1996 as affiliation contracts with those stations' existing network partners expired. The NFL television rights and affiliation deals firmly established Fox as the nation's fourth major network. The network's relationship with the NFL would expand in 1997, when it began airing games from NFL Europe, an agreement which ended when the European league folded in 2005.
With a sports division now established, Fox decided to seek broadcast rights agreements with other major sports leagues. On September 9, 1994, Fox was awarded the broadcast television rights to the National Hockey League in a $155 million bid ; as a result, it became the first broadcast network to be awarded a national television contract to carry NHL games, which longtime NHL Commissioner John Ziegler had long thought to be unattainable. Again, Fox outbid CBS, which wanted to secure the rights as a result of losing the NFL to Fox, for the NHL package. Fox lost the NHL rights to ABC Sports and ESPN in 1999.

MLB, NASCAR, and BCS acquisitions

On November 7, 1995, Fox was awarded partial broadcast rights to Major League Baseball games, in a shared deal with NBC. Through the deal, which Fox paid a fraction of the amount that CBS paid to obtain the rights effective with the 1990 season, Fox would broadcast approximately 16 regular season Saturday afternoon games per season and offered different game broadcasts shown on a regionalized basis. As part of a six-year renewal of this deal – valued at $2.5 billion – in September 2000, Fox Sports became the exclusive over-the-air broadcaster of Major League Baseball, giving it the exclusive rights to the World Series beginning with the 2000 edition, as well as rights to the All-Star Game, select Division Series games and exclusive coverage of the League Championship Series. Under a clause in the contract, if some of the scheduled games were cancelled by a strike or lockout, Fox would still pay Major League Baseball for a full slate of annual games, while the league in turn had to compensate Fox with additional telecasts.
In 1998, Fox obtained the broadcast rights to the Cotton Bowl Classic college football game. In 2007, Fox began airing most of the games of the Bowl Championship Series, including the BCS Championship Game, in a deal worth close to $20 million per game. Due to a separate arrangement between ABC and the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, events in the series that were held at the Rose Bowl stadium – such as the Rose Bowl Game and the 2010 BCS Championship – were excluded from the contract.
On November 11, 1999, Fox and sister cable channel FX were awarded rights to the NASCAR Winston Cup Series and Busch Series as part of NASCAR's first centralized television rights deal, beginning in the 2001 season. The contract covered the first half of the season, with the second half of the season being aired by NBC and TNT. Rights to the Daytona 500 and Pepsi 400 alternated annually, with Fox airing the 500 in odd-numbered years, and the 400 in even-numbered years. Fox's first telecast was the 2001 Daytona 500—an event that would be marred by a final-lap crash that resulted in the death of Dale Earnhardt. Later that year, Fox acquired the motorsports cable network Speedvision, and rebranded it in February 2002 as Speed Channel. Fox intended to use the network as an outlet for ancillary NASCAR content. In September 2002, Speed Channel bought out ESPN's contract to televise the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Fox lost the broadcasting rights to the Bowl Championship Series to ESPN beginning in 2010. In response, Fox introduced a Saturday "game of the week" on FX in 2011, featuring games from the Pac-12, the Big 12 and Conference USA ; Fox also signed deals to carry two new championship games created through conference realignments that occurred in 2010 and 2011: the Big Ten Conference Championship through 2016, and the Pac-12 Championship through 2017 on an alternating basis with ESPN. With the replacement of the BCS with the College Football Playoff, Fox lost the broadcasting rights to the 2015 Cotton Bowl Classic onwards again to ESPN.

Present day

In May 2010, Fox aired the final of the UEFA Champions League, marking the network's first ever soccer broadcast.
In August 2011, Fox Sports announced it had reached a seven-year broadcast agreement with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, ending the mixed martial arts promotion's relationship with Spike. The deal included the rights to broadcast four live events in prime time or late night annually, as well as other UFC programming that would air on various Fox properties, including the Fox network, FX and Fuel TV. The contract expired in 2019, with the UFC moving its broadcast rights to ESPN.
On October 22, 2011, FIFA announced that Fox Sports had acquired rights to air its tournaments beginning in 2015, including the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup. In February 2015, Fox's contract was extended to 2026, in what was reported to be compensation for the rescheduling of the 2022 tournament to late-November/mid-December.
On August 6, 2013, Fox Sports announced a 12-year deal to broadcast the championships of the United States Golf Association, including the U.S. Open, beginning in 2015. In 2016, Fox began to air NHRA drag racing events—primarily on Fox Sports 1 and 2, and with selected flagship events airing on Fox proper.
On July 24, 2017, the Big Ten Conference announced that it had reached six-year deals with Fox Sports and ESPN to hold rights to its football games beginning in the 2017 season, with Fox's package expanding on its involvement in BTN. As part of the contract, Fox's contract to run BTN was extended through 2032.
On January 31, 2018, the NFL announced that Fox had acquired the sub-license for its Thursday Night Football package under a five-year deal, beginning in the 2018 NFL season. The deal is reportedly worth an average of more than $660 million per year. On May 6, 2019, Fox Sports announced a multi-year broadcast deal with the XFL, which itself would cease operations less than a year later.
In May 2019, Fox Sports partnered with The Stars Group to launch co-branded sports betting operations, including Fox Bet, as well as the free football prediction game Fox Sports Super 6. As part of the partnership, Fox Corporation acquired a 4.99% minority stake in the company for $236 million, with an option to increase its stake to up to 50% within the next 10 years. The partnership made Fox the first major U.S. sports broadcaster to establish a sports betting operation, taking advantage of the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. With the company's proposed sale to Flutter Entertainment, Fox will have the option in 2021 to acquire an 18.5% stake in its U.S. subsidiary FanDuel Group.

Channels

In addition to the broadcast division, Fox Sports Media Group owns numerous regional and national cable sports channels and radio network in the United States, which include:
Fox Sports Media Group formally announced the replacement of Speed with Fox Sports 1 on March 5, 2013, with the network eventually launching on the tentative date of August 17, 2013. The network would air content from Major League Baseball, the UFC, NASCAR, soccer and multiple college sports events. The network launched Fox Sports Live as a competitor to ESPN's SportsCenter, with the former described as a "24/7 news franchise providing around-the-clock coverage through regularly scheduled programs, hourly updates and an information-rich ticker that provides a network agnostic sports event television schedule." Notable personalities on FS1 include Regis Philbin, Mike Tyson, Michael Strahan, Erin Andrews, as well as many others. The international feed of Speed would eventually be replaced with Fox Sports Racing on February 20, 2015.
On August 17, 2013, the extreme sports-focused Fuel TV was rebranded as Fox Sports 2, a companion network serving primarily as an overflow channel for Fox Sports 1, along with providing supplementary sports coverage.
On September 2, 2013, Fox Soccer was replaced by FXX, an entertainment-based sister network to FX with a focus on comedy programming. With the concurrent shutdown and replacement of the network, Fox Soccer's sports programming was shifted over to Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2. As a result, outside of very rare sports conflicts on both Fox Sports networks, FX no longer carries any sports programming. Fox Soccer's companion premium service, Fox Soccer Plus, continues to exist and supplements soccer coverage on Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2.

Former affiliates

Prior to its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company, Fox Sports Networks operated as a slate of regional sports networks with broadcasting agreements that follow league market distribution rules. For example, cable and satellite subscribers in Kansas City, Missouri receive Kansas City Royals games on Fox Sports Midwest, while viewers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin see Milwaukee Brewers games on Fox Sports Wisconsin. The regionalized coverage frequently restricts broadcasts of live sporting events outside of a team's home market.
In addition to game coverage, the regional networks also air regionally-based news, analysis, magazine, and documentary programming, as well as some common national programming.
In some markets, the regional Fox Sports network operates one or multiple overflow feeds that carry additional programs that cannot be carried on the main feed due to event conflicts.

High-definition coverage

For Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, Fox Sports produced its first telecast in a 16:9, 480p enhanced-definition format marketed as "Fox Widescreen"; while promoted as having better quality than standard definition, and being the first U.S. sporting event produced completely in a widescreen format, it was not true high definition, but still matched the aspect ratio of HDTV sets.
Fox Sports began producing selected events in 720p high definition, starting on July 3, 2004 with the Pepsi 400, select NFL games, the 2004 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, and that year's postseason.
During the following years, Fox would produce more sports telecasts in HD, but still fell back on using 480p widescreen for events not televised in HD.
As of late July 2010, all sports programming broadcast by Fox-owned networks began transitioning to a format optimized for 16:9 widescreen displays, with graphics framed within a widescreen safe area rather than the safe area, intended to be shown in a letterboxed format on standard definition feeds.

Virtual reality

From 2016 until selling its virtual reality division FoxNext to Disney in 2019, Fox Sports produced a limited number of game telecasts in 360-degree virtual reality, mostly college football. A TV Everywhere login was required to access the broadcast.

4K coverage

In 2017, Fox Sports began to produce selected telecasts in 4K ultra-high-definition television, beginning with selected NASCAR and college basketball events, and for the 2017 season, a college football game per-week. They are primarily available via DirecTV and other supported providers.
Fox began televising its Thursday Night Football games in 1080p upconverted to 4K with HLG HDR on September 26, 2019.

Technological enhancements

The graphics and scoring bugs used by Fox Sports have won awards and changed how sports broadcasts are presented on United States television. The opening notes of the theme used on the Fox network's NFL broadcasts are incorporated in iterations of other themes used on Fox Sports broadcasts. Originally, when the scoring bugs are upgraded, the previous versions were retained for one of the division's other properties for about a year; however, this practice ended in 2009. The first score bug was used for Fox's NFL coverage, and was then expanded to the network's baseball and hockey broadcasts.
One segment of the Scott Schreer-composed theme, coincidentally or otherwise, echoes the notes for the "giddyup, giddyup, giddyup, let's go" line from the Leroy Anderson-composed song, Sleigh Ride. Although, the rhythm of that segment of both tunes is similar to that of the first four bars of both the first and second figures of the Johann Strauss Sr.-composed Radetzky March, which itself is similar to that of the finale of Giachino Rossini's overture to his opera William Tell. During sports broadcasts aired during the Christmas holiday season, Fox Sports broadcasts will sometimes acknowledge this fact by seguéing from the one tune into the other during the commercial break outcue.
Beginning in October 2010, the NFL on FOX theme became uniform for all Fox Sports properties beginning with the National League Championship Series that year and NASCAR races with the 2011 Budweiser Shootout. However, NASCAR and MLB broadcasts reinstated their own theme music in 2016 and 2020, respectively, and the CBB on FOX telecasts were switched over to Roundball Rock, which was formerly used by the NBA on NBC, in 2019.

2001–2003

By 2001, the score bug was restructured as a banner positioned at the top of the screen, and was simpler than the version used today. It was first utilized that year on Fox's NASCAR coverage with the introduction of a new updated graphics package that was based on the 1998 design; the banner and updated graphics were then utilized on the network's Major League Baseball and NFL telecasts. It featured a translucent black rectangle, a baseball diamond graphic for baseball broadcasts on the far left, the team abbreviations in white with their scores in yellow boxes, then the quarter or inning, time or number of outs, pitch count/speed, and the logo of the Fox Sports event property whose game is being telecast on the far right.

2003–2006

Beginning with the 2003 NFL season, the banner was upgraded as part of a new graphics package. At first, the team abbreviations were replaced with team logos, and the scores were rendered in white within black parallelograms. Unlike the previous version, the FoxBox would alternate between a black rectangle and several black parallelograms; however, it reverted to being a black rectangle beginning with the 2004 NFL season, and the team logos would later be replaced with abbreviations in the respective teams' primary colors. Whenever a team scores a point or a run, the team's score and logo would flash a few times.
During baseball broadcasts, the entire banner would flash with the words "HOME RUN" and the team's name in the team's color zooming in to the center from both left and right. In late 2005, a new white banner resembling a chrome finish was introduced, and the team abbreviations became rendered in white letters in the team's main color; the new banner would then be expanded to NFL and NASCAR broadcasts. The baseball broadcasts continued to use the 2001 scoring banners and graphics in 2004 until the network's coverage of that year's postseason.
During NASCAR telecasts from 2007-2011, this graphic package was briefly used to weather delay updates and also used for merchandise for the Digger cam.
This Graphics Package is also used during Prelude to the Dream at Eldora from 2005-2007.

2006–2010

Beginning with the 2006 NFL season, the scoring banner was upgraded again. This time, real-time scores from around the league were included as a permanent fixture on the extreme right side of the bar, while the banner's coloring changed to the colors of the team currently in possession of the ball. The banner no longer flashed after the scoring of runs, touchdowns or field goals. During baseball broadcasts, the diamond graphic appeared in middle-justification and was slimmed down to just the three main bases, unlike other implements which included home plate. This banner, after first being used for NFL broadcasts in 2006, was eventually expanded to Bowl Championship Series, NASCAR and MLB broadcasts; baseball telecasts, however, continued to use the late-2005 scoring banners and graphics in 2007. In 2008, Fox NASCAR introduced a new camera embedded between turns one and two on the various tracks; it was soon known as "Digger Cam", unveiled alongside a gopher mascot named Digger. For the 2009 season, the 2006 graphics package was dropped entirely for Fox's baseball telecasts and replaced with the new Fox Sports Net graphics, which had debuted on baseball telecasts across FSN's affiliates that season. These were later repositioned for widescreen in July 2010, when Fox Sports began presenting all of its high definition programming content in the aspect ratio, with letterboxing on standard definition feeds relayed to pay television providers.

2010–2014

At the beginning of the 2010 NFL pre-season, Fox debuted a new graphics package for its football coverage – an upgraded version of the 2006 design with a "much more colorful 3D look." The new graphics also marked a migration to Vizrt hardware for CG, providing producers with a more streamlined workflow for graphics. The new design would be rolled out for Fox's racing coverage and the Speed network in 2011, at the start of the 2011 MLB season, and on Fox Soccer.
Starting with the 2010 National League Championship Series, Fox began using its football theme music for its Major League Baseball broadcasts, to the confusion and dismay of some viewers. Division president Eric Shanks gave a rationale for the change, stating that the NFL theme music was more energetic than the previous theme; Shanks then announced that the NFL theme would be used for all Fox Sports telecasts going forward.

2014–2017

A new graphics package for Fox Sports broadcasts was introduced for Fox's NASCAR coverage leading up to the 2014 Daytona 500. Fox Sports Midwest producer Max Leinwand described the look as being "cleaner" than the previous design. The design has also been used to introduce new design conventions for some of Fox's graphics; for NASCAR, the running order ticker was replaced by a leaderboard-style display that was initially displayed as a vertical sidebar. MLB uses a score bug at the bottom-right of the screen instead of the top-left, while NFL utilized a top-left score bug with a layout similar to the one used 2010 to 2011.

2017–present

A new graphics package was launched on August 27, 2017 for Fox's first NFL preseason broadcast, featuring a solid-colored rectangular design and a football score bar positioned across the bottom of the screen. Upon its debut, the new football scoreboard was widely panned by viewers for its basic appearance and small text size. This on-screen look has been adopted by Big Ten Network, and was also rolled out for MLB coverage on Fox and FS1 starting with the 2017 MLB postseason and then for NASCAR coverage in 2018. Fox continues to use Vizrt software, and began to increasingly utilize laptops to run its on-air graphics as opposed to full systems.

2020–present

A new football-only graphics package was launched during coverage of Super Bowl LIV on February 2, 2020. The new scoreboard was updated to display real-time player statistics between plays, as well as the use of illustrated portraits of key players as opposed to traditional photos. This graphics package was used for Fox's coverage of the relaunched XFL as well.

Public service

In February 2008, Fox Sports announced a new charitable foundation called Fox Sports Supports, which provides grants and marketing support for health-related causes. Each organization is tied to a specific events package seen on Fox Sports.
The following are the charities supported during the history of the program:

2008–2009 cycle (began with 2008 Daytona 500)

Although the amount of sports content on the network has gradually expanded since Fox Sports was founded in 1994, Fox's sports schedule on weekend afternoons has remained very inconsistent to this day as the majority of its sports contracts are with professional leagues and collegiate conferences associated with more widely known sporting events, with very limited supplementary coverage of amateur, extreme or winter sports that can be aired during the daytime even when major events are not broadcast – leaving absences in daytime sports coverage on either a Saturday, a Sunday or both on certain weeks. Syndicated programming and/or infomercials scheduled by the network's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates, as well as occasional Fox Sports-produced specials and Fox-supplied preview specials for upcoming primetime shows fill Fox stations' weekend afternoon schedules on days with limited to no sports programming.
Some of the network's sports telecasts delay or outright pre-empt regularly scheduled local evening newscasts on Fox stations due to typical overruns past a set time block or pre-determined later start times; a few Fox affiliates that maintain news departments have opted not to air or have cancelled early evening newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays due to frequent sports preemptions in that daypart, while others instead reschedule their weekend early evening news programs to an earlier timeslot if possible when Fox is scheduled to air an evening game or race.
Conversely, some Fox Sports programming is delayed for later airing for several reasons. WSVN in Miami traditionally delays Fox Sports' Sunday lower-tier racing programming to late night in order to maintain their revenue on Sunday afternoons for paid programming, while several stations often disregarded the pregame shows for the 2018 FIFA World Cup to reduce schedule disruption. In November 2018, WITI in Milwaukee opted to move the final of that year's Las Vegas Invitational college basketball tournament on that year's Black Friday to their secondary Antenna TV subchannel in order to avert disruption to their news schedule before a primetime airing of that year's Apple Cup football game. Fox's NFL Kickoff, preceding Fox NFL Sunday, is often aired on a secondary subchannel in several markets due to both official team programming and E/I programming burdens needing to be satisfied by Fox affiliates.
As is done with CBS, Fox offers a flex schedule for its NFL, NCAA and Major League Baseball telecasts, featuring a selection of up to four games that vary on a regional basis, allowing either one or two consecutive telecasts to air on a given day depending on the Fox station's designated market.

Programs throughout the years

Current broadcast rights

; NFL on Fox
; Major League Baseball on Fox
; Fox College Football
; Fox College Hoops
; Motorsport
; NASCAR on Fox
; Other motorsport events
; Fox Soccer
; Other
; Soccer
; Golf

Current

Play-by-play

Play-by-play

The "Fox Sports" name has been used in other sports media assets.