Photograph by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
Javier
Lopez of the San Francisco Giants pitches during Game Four of the
National League Division Series at AT&T Park on Oct. 7 in San
Francisco
Game
4 of the National League Division Series between the Washington
Nationals and San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night brought Fox (FOX)
Sports 1 its largest audience since the network’s launch in August of
last year. An average 3.92 million people tuned in, according to Nielsen
data provided by Horizon Media, slightly more than the 3.89 million who
watched Game 4 of the series between the Atlanta Braves and the
Los
Angeles Dodgers on TBS a year earlier. The number is a good sign for
Major League Baseball and a validation for Fox Sports 1.Less than 4 million, however, is piddling for the network’s main rival, ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney (DIS), which drew a larger audience 150 times during the same period. For a snapshot of ESPN’s dominance, here are the top 20 most-watched programs on both networks since the launch of Fox Sports 1.
Fox was not shy about its intention to take on ESPN, but so far there’s been no contest, as ESPN has brazenly pointed out. Since Fox Sports 1 first aired 14 months ago, its average audience per telecast has been 112,000. During the same prior, ESPN’s average audience has been more than 1 million. Yet for all the bluster, Fox knows that ESPN had a 34-year head start. For now, the cable channel just needs to survive and grow. “Launching a new live sports network is a tall task,” says Chris Bevilacqua, co-founder of sports media consulting firm Bevilacqua Helfant Ventures. “I would expect it’s going to take a number of years before they really start humming.”
In an interview with Sports Business Journal in March, Fox Sports Media Group’s executive vice president of programming, Bill Wanger, dialed back expectations, saying the first goal was to do better than the Speed channel that used to occupy that same slot. From there, says Bevilacqua, the network needs to renegotiate its carriage deals with major providers. As it stands, the monthly per-subscriber fees that Fox Sports 1 gets are about one-tenth of the $6.04 that ESPN charges. In addition to negotiating higher fees, says Bevilacqua, the network needs better placement on the channel menu. “They’ve got to condition a sports audience that’s been very used to going to ESPN,” he says.
All that is preliminary to the bigger task of competing for the rights to marquee live sporting events. Almost all of the most-watched programs for Fox Sports 1 and ESPN are live contests. (For ESPN, 14 of the top 20 are Monday Night Football games.) The few studio shows that crack the top are either leading into or coming out of these events. For now, Fox Sports 1 is surviving on Major League Baseball, Nascar, college football, and Ultimate Fighting. It will also get boosts from the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada next year and the men’s World Cup in Russia in 2018.
Yet with the NBA extending its national TV deals earlier this week, many of the most valuable rights are locked up into the next decade. The NFL’s Thursday Night Football package is theoretically available again next season, but the league will almost certainly keep those games on a broadcast network. And Big Ten rights are available come 2017, but beyond that, it’s a waiting game. Fox Sports 1 has enough in its current portfolio to get to the next big round of bidding. And that, says Brad Adgate, director of research at Horizon Media, is when we’ll know if ESPN has a real competitor. “Can they pry Monday Night Football away from ESPN for the 2022 season?” asks Adgate. “Do they make a bid on [NHL] hockey after the contract expires in 2021?”
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