Fox agreed to pay more than $400 million, while Telemundo, owned by Comcast/NBC, will pay about $600 million to broadcast those two men’s World Cups, several television executives familiar with the deal said. The agreements also give Fox and Telemundo the rights to the 2015 and 2019 Women’s World Cups and other international tournaments.
This amount is more than double the combined $425 million that ESPN ($100 million) and the Spanish-language network Univision ($325 million) paid to broadcast the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and the 2014 World Cup, to be played in Brazil. Both networks had been favored to retain the rights for upcoming World Cups.
While FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, did not release the bid figures, the record rights fees come at a heady time for the sport in the United States.
The women’s World Cup drew record ratings on ESPN this summer. Helped by a crowd of 64,140 in Seattle last weekend, Major League Soccer, the domestic men’s professional league, is expected to set a record for average attendance, about 18,000. Meanwhile, dozens of national and international matches are available to American viewers on television and online each week.
“This is what people have been talking about since the World Cup was held in the United States in 1994 — is the U.S. a soccer nation? Clearly, it is,” said Michael Cohen, who was the executive producer for Major League Soccer and its marketing arm from 2001 to 2010. “You’ve got a whole generation of kids in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have grown up with soccer. And with the influx of immigrants coming to this country, soccer is their No. 1 sport. It is the perfect storm.”
It is difficult to compare the World Cup fees with broadcast rights packages for other major sports, because the terms are dissimilar. For example, ESPN, ABC and TNT will carry the N.B.A. through the 2015-16 season under eight-year contracts worth $7.4 billion that include hundreds of regular-season games, the playoffs and digital rights. ESPN is paying $125 million per year for television, radio, digital, international and marketing rights for college football’s Bowl Championship Series from 2011 to 2014.
Rights fees for the World Cup in the United States still trail by a wide margin the fees paid for the Olympics. NBC recently paid $4.38 billion for four Olympic Games through 2020, but the growing soccer market is not that mature.
“I think there is a dichotomy of interest in soccer in the U.S.,” said Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp Ltd., a Chicago-based sports business consulting firm. “We have a growing interest in the top level of the international game — the English Premier League, the World Cup. We have not shown a dramatic increase in interest at the homegrown level. I suspect that is because of the quality of the game.”
Still, 18 million Americans play soccer, and the sport has found a comfortable niche in the sporting landscape, especially for its biggest events. The championship matches of the past two World Cups have drawn bigger American television audiences than the average World Series viewership in the corresponding years of 2006 and 2010.
The 2010 World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, shown in the afternoon in the United States, drew 24 million viewers on ABC and Univision — 10 million more than the average primetime audience on Fox for the San Francisco Giants’ five-game victory over the Texas Rangers in the 2010 World Series.
This time of year, soccer is as plentiful as football via online streaming and cable and satellite television. From Friday to Monday of this weekend, about 75 soccer matches will be available for viewing in the United States, featuring American college and professional teams and some of the world’s top club teams in England, Spain, Germany, Italy, Brazil, France, the Netherlands and Mexico.
After the women’s World Cup in Germany, even casual sports fans know forward Abby Wambach and goalkeeper Hope Solo, whose crossover appeal landed her on “Dancing With the Stars.” Forward Landon Donovan of the men’s national team is featured in a national Gatorade advertising campaign, and goalkeeper Tim Howard is a spokesman for Allstate insurance.
A decade ago, with television interest in the World Cup lagging, Major League Soccer’s marketing arm bought the English-language rights to the 2002 and 2006 World Cups for $40 million, paid production costs to have the games broadcast on ESPN and split advertising revenue with the network. On Friday, Fox paid 10 times that amount. (Telemundo’s higher fee reflected the greater World Cup interest among Spanish-speaking viewers.)
“In the U.S., the game has always spoken to all the hyphenated Americans — German, Italian, Mexican, etc.,” said the ESPN.com soccer columnist David Hirshey, who has published best-selling memoirs of Mia Hamm and David Beckham as executive editor of HarperCollins. “But now it crosses demographic lines, having been embraced by high-definition-TV-watching suburban teens and 20- to 40-year-old hipsters with disposable income.”
Fox, which said it was “truly honored,” scored a coup in wresting the 2018 and 2022 World Cups away from ESPN/ABC, which has broadcast soccer’s global championship since 1994. In the bidding process on Wednesday and Thursday in Zurich, where FIFA is based, ESPN raised its bid from $350 million to $400 million, two television executives said, but Fox went higher.
The World Cup matches will be in Russia in 2018, and in Qatar in 2022.
Fox’s bid adds the sport’s crown jewel to a soccer collection on its broadcast network and a cable network, Fox Soccer Channel, that already broadcasts the European Champions League, the world’s premier club competition, along with weekly English Premier League and Italian league matches.
Gaining the World Cup should also enhance the cable distribution of Fox Soccer, which is available in 40 million American homes, compared with 100 million for ESPN.
“This reflects on Fox’s part a commitment to be the primary source for broadcasting international soccer in the U.S.,” said Ganis, the sports consultant.
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