Late World Cup To Squeeze Fox’s Sports Schedule

Even before Friday’s FIFA Men’s World Cup draw, it was obvious that the 2022 event was going to present challenges from a TV perspective.

Due to the extreme summer temperatures in host country Qatar (averages of 108 degrees fahrenheit and highs climbing above 120 degrees), the World Cup was moved away from its typical summer timeframe to November/December timing. You can argue temperatures are one of many reasons why Qatar perhaps shouldn’t have been selected to host to begin with. But in any case, they are, and with that come some significant challenges for rights holder Fox.

Group stage games will begin on Monday, Nov. 21 and continue through Friday, Dec. 2 — a timeframe that encompasses Thanksgiving Day (usually the most-watched regular season NFL action of the year) and Black Friday, as well as the final college football Saturday of the season (Nov. 26) and an NFL Sunday in the midst of a push toward the playoffs.

The knockout round begins on Saturday, Dec. 3 — or college football’s championship weekend, for millions of Americans who already had those dates circled on the calendar for a different brand of “football” than the World Cup is peddling.

This is all before even considering the U.S. team’s schedule and how it all fits in. The United States’ first game is set for Monday, Nov. 21 against Wales/Scotland/Ukraine, then game two will take place vs. England on Black Friday, before the final game against Iran on Tuesday, Nov. 29. Should the U.S. win its group, the first knockout game will be on Sunday, Dec. 4, or right in the thick of the NFL schedule. A second-place finish means butting right up against college football conference championships.

Such an arrangement would be tough for any rights holder, but there’s a particular challenge here for Fox, given its focus on both college and pro football games as such a large share of its late fall/early winter programming already. With Sundays occupied by the NFL on Fox, and Fox and FS1 airing college football games late in the season, the network is probably pushing plenty of World Cup games to streaming… which would be more tenable if Fox had a streaming infrastructure like Peacock/Hulu/Paramount+.

Instead, Fox has Tubi and the Fox Sports App; neither of which have the sort of subscriber bases of the aforementioned competitive services. Fox’s more casual approach to streaming was always going to mean lagging behind Disney, Paramount and NBCU to an extent. Once this year’s World Cup gets going, that fact will be magnified even further, as Fox also engages in an uphill battle for viewers on linear TV in a year that would’ve otherwise been a boon for the network had it appeared in its normal summer slot.

The last time the U.S. and England men’s teams squared off in the World Cup back in 2010, it was one of the five most-watched World Cup games (domestically) ever. That matchup, on June 12 — a Saturday — basically had attention all to itself while game five of that year’s NBA Finals was in primetime the following day. In 2022, England and the U.S. will play on Black Friday opposite various Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC college football rivalry games, plus holiday shopping interests and consumer travel schedules.

Though it’s tough to compare any U.S. television audiences from 2018 against today’s more fractured landscape, the likely tune-in decline for this year’s World Cup would seem self-induced. In 2018, TV ratings for the men’s World Cup were at their lowest since 2000, in large part due to the absence of the U.S. team. A typical summer window in 2022 could’ve at least led to a rebound with the United States back in the field of 32. Instead, that rooting interest is almost certainly diluted by holiday distractions and the existing American preference for college football and the NFL.

The handwringing for Fox is also temporary, at least from an audience standpoint. Qatar won’t host next time around (2026), so the World Cup will return to summer in four years. Additionally, the network gets the boost of not only an expanded field to 48 teams — so a lot more games — but also the benefit of the United States, Mexico and Canada hosting the event that year, adding to the domestic interest and excitement here.

That doesn’t solve the streaming question, but a lot can change there too between now and then, including Fox holding onto its sports arm. While Fox currently owns World Cup rights through 2026, there’s speculation that the company is cost-cutting again and that could mean shedding sports less than a decade after it sold entertainment (now with Disney) and regional sports holdings (now with Sinclair). Obviously a sale to any of its linear competitors or a streaming service would mean a vastly different approach — and one that engages far more across platforms than Fox can at current.