For Fox, the $485 million paid for the English-language World Cup broadcast rights in America may be the best investment the network has ever made.
Ratings are up significantly, fueled by Nielsen’s recent enhancement of audience numbers via more accurate out-of-home viewing metrics. In the end, as explained by Stephen Battaglio of the Los Angeles Times, Fox projects that 150 million will watch some portion of the World Cup coverage. That’s close to the 170 million who watch Fox’s NFL regular-season games.
“For us, it’s like having two NFL seasons in a single year,” Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill told Battaglio.
The key has been capturing the extent to which people are gathering to watch World Cup matches in places other than their homes.
“For many years, the numbers were under-counted and what we’re seeing now is a truer representation of the sports audience,” Mulvihill told Battaglio. “You just cannot overstate what it means to us to be able to capture all that viewing that’s happening at fan fests, in bars and at smaller watch parties.”
Fox currently pays $2.25 billion per year for its NFL slate of games. The World Cup broadcast fee is 21.5 percent of that amount.
So, yes, it’s a very good deal for Fox. And there’s a good chance that, the next time FIFA shops the rights, the price will be dramatically higher.
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