As someone who loves both the NFL and great soccer I think that Fox has come up with a great plan and it starts Sunday.
Fox Sports brilliant plan is to market English Premier League to their vast NFL audience with the hopes of picking new viewers along the way. By taking some of the best soccer brands in the world and giving them an audience in excess of 100 million homes there is no doubt there is going to be some curious casual fans who just might like “The beautiful game” as Pele calls it.
So after the Redskins – Cardinals game Washington viewers will see a huge game between two bitter rivals Chelsea and Manchester United. The game will be tape delayed and for those true soccer fans they will be able watch all the action live on Fox Soccer Channel at 11a.m.
The key difference here is that Fox Soccer Channel is in 45 million homes nationwide while Fox is in over a 100 million. You can see the advantage soccer will get by being paired with the NFL with some weeks being seen after a game and some weeks as a lead-in to the NFL broadcast on Fox.
As most that follow soccer knows Manchester United and Chelsea, between them have won the past six Barclays English Premier League championships. They should provide Fox with quality soccer right out of the box plus both teams very loyal fan bases in the Washington area as well as nationwide.
Back in May Fox aired the UEFA Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona and it viewed by a very respectable number of around 2.6 million. According Nielsen Sports just four years ago games aired on Fox Soccer Channel drew about 50,000 and 70,000 viewers; now it’s more like 100,000 and growing rapidly and that does not count the English Premier League on ESPN which has a much larger subscriber base than does Fox Soccer Channel.
Soccer viewership, especially for European soccer and international games, has been rising dramatically in recent years, making it one of the fastest-growing televised sports in the United States.
With the current EPL season just four games old, Fox reported ratings for the early-season games on Fox Soccer Channel among the coveted 18 to 34-year-old demographic are up 76 percent from a year ago and trending upward. Fox Soccer Channel 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.
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 Channel. Fox Sports Media Group, executives are on record as saying 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.
