Oct
10
What is Fox Sports 1? How Does It Affect You?
As we speed into the last quarter of 2012 and prepare for what’s ahead in 2013, there is one thing that is on the horizon for US sports fans and that is the expected appearance of a new all-sports cable channel. No, it’s not NBC Sports Network, although its trials and tribulations this fall will be the subject of a sports media thoughts post this week.
Sometime over the next two years, Fox Sports will announce that the sometimes all-motorsports, sometimes reality channel SPEED will be converted to an all-sports channel that will air MLB, Big 12 and Pac-12 sports, MMA, some NASCAR and anything else it can its hands on. You’re seeing a little bit of this through Fox’s increased sports programming on FX. Two Saturdays ago, FX had a college football doubleheader followed by a UFC on FX Fight Night.
Imagine that next year on the new SPEED which will in all likelihood be rebranded as Fox Sports 1. Why Fox Sports 1? Because it will be part of a company rebranding of Fox’s other sports channels, Fox Soccer and Fuel as Fox Sports 2 and Fox Sports 3, respectively. And there is precedence for this. Fox’s Australian channels are called Fox Sports 1, 2 and 3. Each channel serves to carry certain sports and big events like the Olympics or the Australian Open.
For American sports fans, expect the sports properties to line up as follows once the rebranding takes shape:
FOX SPORTS 1 (FORMERLY SPEED)
- College Basketball (Big 12 & Pac-12)
- College Football (Big 12 & Pac-12)
- English Premier League (Survival Sunday)
- Mixed Martial Arts (UFC)
- MLB
- NASCAR
- UEFA Champions League
- World Cup Soccer
FOX SPORTS 2/FOX SPORTS 2 PLUS (FORMERLY FOX SOCCER/FOX SOCCER PLUS)
- English Premier League
- Scottish Premier League
- UEFA Champions League
- UEFA Europa League
- Australian Rules Football
- Rugby
FOX SPORTS 3 (FORMERLY FUEL)
- Extreme Sports
- Australian Rules Football
- Mixed Martial Arts (UFC)
Fox has already signed for 40 MLB games on Fox Sports 1, taking 14 games away from its over the air package and another 13 away from TBS to form the new slate of games on cable. In addition, the new cable channel will air some League Division Series games starting in 2014.
Fox is about to announce a renewal of its NASCAR rights and expect part of its current schedule of 13 races in the early portion of the Sprint Cup calendar to migrate to Fox Sports 1. If Fox keeps the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, the races could be split among Fox Sports 1 and 3.
And if Fox manages to hold off Al Jazeera’s expected bid for the US rights to English Premier League games, perhaps Fox Sports 1 could gain a package of early Saturday or Sunday morning matches with the rest going to Fox Sports 2.
There are a lot of possibilities for the Fox Sports channels. It could also be in very good position to gain NBA games when the new set of packages go to bid in 2014. And let us not forget about a potential 8 game Thursday Night NFL package that could cover the first half of the regular beginning in 2014 that Fox would certainly be interested in.
It was thought that NBC was positioning itself to challenge ESPN’s supremacy, but with its acquiring of MLB, NASCAR and college sports plus the World Cup in 2015, Fox just might have leap frogged ahead of the Peacock as ESPN’s main opponent.
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Where do you think Formula One ends up?
Would probably be on Fox Sports 1.
Its amazing how good FOX Sports is with ALL of their Broadcasts and how rotten and biased the FOX News is. Guess its hard to lie about who scored the touchdown or took the checkered.
Can you imagine that Hannity guy trying to report a race " Yeah he won but we know he is cheating" LOL
There are some people who would disagree about Fox Sports being any good. The names "Joe Buck", "Tim McCarver", "Dick Stockton", "Scooter", "Digger", and "glow puck" are likely to be brought up.
I know it's simply a change in branding but I would miss my Fox Soccer. They're like a friend who will always be there when more-desired people don't always come through for you. IOW, you can count on at least one channel that shows association football.
2014 is going to be an interesting year.
Well, there's beIN Sport. If you have a cable or satellite company that carries it, of course.
With Serie A and Ligue 1 gone, Fox Soccer's only real programming (EPL, Champions League, World Cup) is all stuff that could conceivably show up on FS1. Stuff like Europa League is virtually on the other end of the spectrum.
There's not much point in rebranding Fox Soccer if there are going to be firm walls between what shows up on which network (do the Australian networks do this?), with FS2 being all soccer and FS3 being all Fuel's old programming. "Fox Sports 2 Plus" kind of belies that as well. Simply rebranding Fox Soccer Plus "Fox Sports Plus" works just as well, and Fox could conceivably even use it as a Fox Sports 4 in a pinch, if it wanted to.
Maybe Fox wants to market each network to a different audience, but then rebranding them to follow the same naming scheme defeats the point of that. I've never really seen Fuel as a traditional "sports" network in the same sense as, say, NBCSN; its UFC programming nudges it in that direction, but not really. As it currently stands, it would be odd to call it FS3.
Basically, would EPL games air on FS1 or FS3 beyond Survival Sunday? Would FS1 air more Champions League games than FX does, and air them on FS3 as well? Would UFC events show up on FS2? How about college sports on FS2 and FS3? (Given the state of FSN's national programming with Comcast SportsNet dropping it, I'd be shocked if this last doesn't happen.)
And what about Speed's coverage of NASCAR practice and qualifying? If NASCAR doesn't launch its own network, would the Fox Sports networks continue to air them even for races it doesn't have the rights to? (I guess the NASCAR renegotiations will settle that…) In other words, would Fox treat FS2 and FS3 similar to how ESPN treats ESPN2, or should I be thinking of a completely different model?
Has anyone actually reported that Fox Soccer and Fuel would be rebranded, or is this just your speculation? And would anything happen to Fox College Sports, or will it remain the suite of networks Fox is dimly aware exists? (I guess that depends on how much Fox raids FSN's national programming.)
[...] week, one of my sports media peers presented a scenario, where Fox would rebrand a total of three of its cable networks – SPEED, FUEL and Fox Soccer [...]
[...] their deal and rebranding Speed to Fox Sports 1, I found this while snooping around the web today. What is Fox Sports 1? How Does It Affect You? – Fang's Bites Fox is really planning big things for its sports [...]
[...] their deal and rebranding Speed to Fox Sports 1, I found this while snooping around the web today. What is Fox Sports 1? How Does It Affect You? – Fang's Bites Fox is really planning big things for its sports [...]