On August 18, one day after Fox celebrated the one-year anniversary of cable network Fox Sports 1, ESPN aired a preseason football game between Cleveland and Washington. The number of total viewers (6.9 million) nearly doubled the most-watched sporting event all year on Fox Sports 1.

Anyone—network executives included—who thought FS1 would pose a threat to the monolith that is ESPN right out of the gate should have known better. But so too should the cacophony of media pundits all-too-ready to call the nascent cable sports network an unmitigated failure after only one year.

“In a landscape where ESPN frankly has held rank for many decades, it’s very natural when a new sports network launches for those comparisons to be made,” says David Nathanson, Fox Sports 1’s general manager and chief operating officer, “but it’s not something we’re perpetuating.”

Nathanson says network executives are very bullish on year two.

“In our first year, we didn’t release our entire arsenal of rights,” he says. In fact, there are a number of reasons FS1 executives are still feeling plucky.

FS1 still has a host of new live sports properties on the way, including the Major League Baseball playoffs, golf’s U.S. Open and Sprint Cup racing plus the 2015 Women’s World Cup and the men’s World Cup starting in 2018. It still looks poised to make a run at the NBA when the league’s current broadcast deal runs out. Most importantly, it’s still bankrolled by Fox, a company with an endless pit of money and an executive group that seems willing to continue pouring in resources to make it successful.

“The first thing we did really well is merge three existing networks [SPEED, Fox Soccer and Fuel TV] to create this sports network,” Nathanson says. “When you consider the resources behind those channels, to merge them and get those teams focused in the same direction and build the foundation, that’s something we’re really proud of.”

That’s not to say year one was a roaring success. MLB ratings have been lower than projected and Big East basketball ratings were brutal, due to the departure of most of the conference’s powerhouse schools. Original shows Fox Soccer Daily and Fox Football Daily were canned early on. So was Crowd Goes Wild, an irreverent talk show that paired octogenerian Regis Philbin with millennial social media sensation Katie Nolan. It was replaced by another hour of a simulcast of Mike Francesa’s radio show (which should be about all you need to know about that show’s ability to draw an audience).

“We have to be bold enough to make hard decisions and constantly review the properties we have,” Nathanson says. “One of the hardest things we did was make difficult decisions on shows we came out of the gate with.”

The surrounding programming landscape made it even more challenging for a new network to launch this year. Fox Sports 1 went up against an NBC Sports Network that received a huge ratings boost from the Winter Olympics and the always-dominant ESPN just happened to have the world’s most-watched sporting event with the 2014 World Cup. Nathanson acknowledges the fierce competition but says Fox also had its own big-ticket promotional tool: the 2014 Super Bowl.

FS1 reportedly averaged about 122,000 18-49 year-old viewers in prime time over the course of their first year. ESPN tracked an average of 762,000 over that time. But paired against more realistic competition, the network posted some encouraging numbers. FS1 grew by 48% in prime time compared to SPEED, the network it replaced and topped ESPN2 in prime time 75 times.

“Those are the ratings that most startup networks get,” says Broadcasting & Cable‘s John Consoli. “The problem was the media sort of picked up on the Fox [hype] and started making comparisons…Fox Sports 1 has said their goal is to compete with ESPN but that’s not going to happen for five or ten years.”

One huge step in the right direction would be to grab a piece of the NBA pie when the league’s current broadcast deals with Turner and ABC/ESPN are up after the 2015-16 season. Many pundits believe Fox will do whatever it takes to land basketball. For now, Nathanson would only offer that the network will review every property that becomes available.

On the advertising side, Consoli says the network did over-guarantee to some media buyers and has been offering makegoods for their second year. Many advertisers also reportedly had to buy in on FS1 to get ad time on the Super Bowl.

While the network can boast of carriage in 90 million households, subscriber fees are believed to be around 60 cents per sub, according to SNL Kagan. That’s better than the 31 cents believed to be negotiated for SPEED but stratospheres less than ESPN’s more than six dollars per subscriber.

“At this point Fox Sports 1 needs the cable operators much more than they need them,” Consoli says. He points to the long-running carriage dispute between Time Warner and NFL Network over subscriber fees. “If they couldn’t muscle the cable operators [for high subscriber fees], how is Fox Sports 1 going to do any better?” he asks.

Still Fox has the resources and the wealth to continue what’s sure to be an uphill climb for years into the future.

“If they want this to succeed, they’re going to keep pouring money into it,” Consoli says. “It’s a long-term thing and they’re just going to keep plugging away.”

Image courtesy Fox Sports 1 Facebook Page

Tags:


  Save as PDF