Fox set for huge football weekend as World Cup leads into NFL: Sports on TV

soccer vs soccer football — or after soccer football — The World Cup final and the National Football League will *almost* collide on American television this weekend.

Mind you, this is only happening because the quarterly World Cup was postponed to the second half of the year due to brutal summer heat in host country Qatar.

So fans of each sport enjoy arguing over the popularity of their respective games — soccer is arguably the most popular global sport, and the NFL dominates ‘Murika’ — schedules and hours What made the difference was the World Cup’s biggest weekend of edging coverage. Close to American professional football.

Fox owns the media rights to both World Cup and NFL games, and pays a hefty fee to air both. The network has not commented, but it’s standard practice to have contingency plans in case major events threaten to overlap. Especially programming for big events.

Argentina beat Croatia 3-0 on Tuesday to advance to the final, with the semi-final between France and Morocco on Wednesday at 2pm. The loser of Croatia and France-Morocco will face off in his third-place play-off, scheduled for Saturday at 10am, with the final taking place on Sunday at 10am.

The final, which will captivate millions of American viewers, will feature an additional 15-minute halftime in addition to the regular 45-minute halftime. What is not known is how much extra time will be added at the end of regulation to cover injuries and other interruptions in play. If the score is tied at that point, he will have two 15-minute overtime periods. If still tied, a penalty kick will be taken to determine the winner. This is what happened in his 1994 and his 2006.

Four of the 13 knockout stage matches to date have gone past regulation time (all of which ended up on penalties) and three of the final four World Cup matches We needed extra time.

On Sundays, Fox’s pregame coverage begins at noon and live NFL game coverage begins at 1 p.m. CBS also has three 1pm games on its own noon pregame show.

Saturday’s World Cup third-place playoff also contrasts with the NFL Network’s early coverage of the three-game schedule. The Colts-Vikings will start at 1pm, the Ravens-Browns at 4:30pm, and the Dolphins-Bills at 8pm. 15:00

Sunday’s finals could go so long that it could lead directly to live NFL game coverage, or actually boost NFL totals after a recap pregame show. A live sports lead-in is a powerful centerpiece booster for your network.

And if the game threatens to go too deep into NFL pregame coverage, Fox could move its World Cup postgame coverage up to FS1.

France’s 2-1 win over England on Saturday — a football rivalry mingled with centuries of geopolitical history — averaged 8.85 million viewers on US Fox and NBC-owned Spain. 3.1 million on the language channel Telemundo, about 12 million in total.

The previous World Cup final between France and Croatia in Russia in 2018 averaged 17.8 million US viewers on Fox and Telemundo. The US Men’s National Team did not qualify for the tournament that year. In the 2014 World Cup final (Germany vs. Argentina) he averaged 18 million, and in the 2010 Spain vs. Netherlands final he averaged around 16 million.

In the UK, the match averaged 15 million viewers in primetime on ITV1, peaking at 21.3 million per Deadline. There are about 68 million people in the UK with over 27 million TV households. By contrast, in the United States, he has 121 million TV households, with just over half subscribing to cable bundles.

College football: The Army’s 20-17-fold overtime victory over the Navy on Saturday averaged 6.94 million viewers on CBS, and Sports Media Watch ranked it the non-pandemic of the Service Academy rivalry since 2014’s 6.3 million viewers. (2020) pointed out the lowest number of viewers. And due to scheduling disruptions caused by COVID-19, 4.9 million cadets averaged a weekend full of college games.

The rivalry has been on television since 1945 and since 2009 takes place the weekend after the conference championship game on the second Saturday in December.

Since its inception in 1890, the Navy has led the Series 62-54-7.

Audience numbers continued to drop for the Heisman Trophy presentation on ESPN. The Saturday night special, in which USC Caleb Williams won the trophy, averaged 1.65 million viewers. That’s down from 1.85 million last year, but the pandemic-plagued 2020 edition (December to January 2021), which had a record low average viewership of 1.52 million, according to Sports Media Watch data. after moving to the moon).

It peaked at 6 million in 2009, when Alabama receiver Mark Ingram won the Heisman Trophy. Primetime presentation events averaged at least four million viewers from 2007 to 2013, according to SMW.

Heisman’s ceremony will kick off Friday at the Bahamas Bowl at 11:30 a.m. ESPN with UAB and Miami, Ohio, followed by Orlando’s Cure Bowl at 3 p.m. with No. 24 Troy and No. 25 USTA on ESPN.

Oh, sorry, HomeTown Lenders Bahamas Bowl and Duluth Trading Cure Bowl.

If you’re curious about how and why this year’s Bowl has become a more bizarre and obscure corporate sponsor name, read on.

NFL: One issue that has plagued me for some time is outdoor (OOH) viewership. It’s the people watching in bars, restaurants, hotels and fairgrounds. Like families getting together to watch the NFL on Thanksgiving.

Nielsen didn’t start measuring OOH until summer 2020 (obtained via audio signals embedded in broadcasts by Nielsen panelists using portable people meters). The NFL says OOH could increase his game’s total viewership by more than 10%.

And now, the NFL says that when a Giants-Cowboys game averaged 42 million viewers, two weeks after everyone won, viewership for the holiday season was actually much higher. said. The league hasn’t disclosed specific totals for his three games, but according to a person familiar with the data, the Giants’ viewership for his Cowboys exceeds his 50 million viewership.

In a statement, the NFL said in its professional study (which hired Nielsen to conduct a custom survey using 5,800 TV households via NORC at the University of Chicago) that the Thanksgiving game totaled 44.1 million people. of viewers’ average minutes watched by viewers. .

This is primarily OOH and is 31% higher than the originally reported total of 33.6 million. According to the NFL, the study showed viewership for the three holiday games increased by more than 20 million people over initial estimates.

The league conducted a similar custom survey after the Super Bowl in February, which showed 208 million viewers instead of the original 112.3 million viewers Nielsen and NBC reported.

“Quantifying the exact number of people watching an NFL game on Thanksgiving is extremely important in a variety of group settings with family and friends,” said Paul Barre, the NFL’s chief data and analytics officer, in a statement. “Like our study of the Super Bowl, this Nielsen custom study estimates the total viewership for this unique day on the NFL calendar.” I feel it helps me to get a more complete picture of the

So last month’s Giants-Cowboys mid-afternoon appears to have significantly surpassed the old regular season record of 41.47 million set by the Giants-49ers in December 1990. Welcome to the chaotic world of TV viewership!

Two other holiday games set their own records. CBS’s noontime Lions-Bills set viewership numbers for an early game (31.62 million, as originally reported), while the late Vikings-Patriots game set a Thanksgiving prime-time game record. (26 million as originally reported).

NFL cements position as the most powerful domestic television operator by demonstrating tremendous reach to fans, business partners and advertisers in a cord-cutting era that saw TV households drop by 31 million in five years We are interested in these numbers in order to

“The tradition of family gatherings and watching NFL football on Thanksgiving is endemic to American culture,” said John Steiner, managing director of Americas at Nielsen Sports, in a statement.

Why is it important to count viewers on this pinhead? Beyond the pride of networks and leagues, it tells advertisers that games are valuable commercial airtime, and the money brands pay TV channels is , which funds the media rights fees that fuel much of the NFL’s revenue-based salary cap system.

This also means the network can sell future Thanksgiving NFL airtime to advertisers at higher rates. Industry insiders also said the NFL and Amazon Prime Video are planning to stream the game in mid-afternoon for the first time, as Black Friday in 2023 sees a huge influx of Thanksgiving viewers. I am paying attention to whether

After all, that’s what it’s all about. In other words, money. Live sports is entertainment like ‘White Lotus’ and ‘Yellowstone’, but unlike everything else on television, live major college and professional sports have endured some of the worst audience declines in the television industry. I was.

This means that the network and technology giants continue to try to handle consumer habits and streaming.

Pundits have long wondered how networks could spend millions and billions on live sports media rights, but for now, they’re writing the checks.

All viewing data is from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, as well as other metrics via TV networks, Nielsen, Sports Media Watch, ShowBuzz Daily, 506Sports.com, and leagues. Always Eastern unless otherwise noted.

(Argentinian Lionel Messi Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)