Strategic Partnerships

“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it. ”
— H.E. Luccock

If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my career, it’s that collaboration and strong relationships are vital to success. In an increasingly specialized world, it makes sense to identify natural synergies where two companies can utilize what they each do best to create special opportunities.

At FOX Sports, we sought to do just that — could we partner with platforms and companies that will help us reach new fans? Can they help fund or support an execution we couldn’t get off the ground or take on without their support? Below are a few of our more high-profile partnerships:

Facebook Watch

In 2019, FOX Sports and Facebook teamed up on new, exclusive interactive programs and segments on Facebook Watch, with a focus on football, sports gambling, and more.

A concept was born for us to create FOX Football Sunday, a Facebook-Watch exclusive show featuring our Hall of Fame football talent that primarily operate on television on Sundays – Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan, Tony Gonzalez, and Curt Menefee. Throughout Sunday’s games, our digital content team at FOX would utilize social listening tools to determine what topics and happenings fans were talking about most from the day’s slate of NFL games. We’d then provide the trending topics to our talent for live discussion, and allowed fans to submit their own questions for the crew as well. This digital format also enabled our talent to tell personal stories that might not fit into or be appropriate for linear TV segments. 

We were thrilled with the final product each week, and a number of episodes exceeded well over one million viewers:

We also created another long-form show, “The People vs Colin Cowherd” with Colin Cowherd and Jason McIntyre. For these shows, fans voted on which teams would cover the spread in college football and NFL games. The spreads were provided by FOX Bet (one of our new partners and biggest initiatives in 2019, the foray into sports gambling), and Cowherd responded to the fans to discuss where he believed they were right and wrong.

This partnership was a win all-around:

  • Facebook was looking to add significantly more sports shoulder programming to their ecosystem (besides these main shows there were thousands of highlights provided to Facebook as part of the deal) and we provided some of the top talent in the sports media world

  • We were looking for more long-form digital opportunities and these shows were a natural fit, especially since we received significant funding to create this content

  • We were building out our sports gambling coverage and The People vs. Colin Cowherd became a staple of it

  • Driven by Facebook, these Watch shows received additional in-feed performance boosts that helped us reach new audiences, created significant engagement, and retained viewership on their platform

  • As part of the deal, FOX Sports also dove headfirst into Facebook Groups, launching several new Group communities discussing each of the shows

Twitter Live Shows + Real-Time World Cup Coverage

For both the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, FOX Sports and Twitter teamed up to give unprecedented coverage of the world’s largest global sporting event. First, our digital content team committed to put every single goal highlight of the entire tournament on Twitter in real-time. That was no small feat considering there were over 300 goals scored in the 2018 and 2019 tournaments, and in the 2014 World Cup it took ESPN nearly 15 minutes per highlight to get them online. Social capabilities had come a long way, but this was still a major undertaking. Games happened around the clock in Russia and Paris and our social clipping units were based in Los Angeles. Fortunately, effort yielded incredible results — both the 2018 and 2019 summers were record-breaking in terms of social viewership.

The crown jewel of the package was FIFA World Cup NOW, our Twitter-exclusive live show that happened every single day of each tournament, live from the host city. In 2018 the FIFA World Cup NOW set was located in Red Square in Moscow, and it was followed up outside the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 2019. The show itself was quick-hitting and exceptionally social media-driven. We integrated not only tons of fan reactions and Q&As, but also incorporated social graphics and livestreams from watch parties around the globe. The shows racked up nearly 18 million views on Twitter throughout the tournaments.

These partnerships were also major win-wins:

  • Twitter is the unquestioned social platform king of real-time sports, and as the official broadcaster of the World Cup, it made sense to pool our rights with their platform for maximum audience exposure

  • FOX Sports utilized tons of Twitter-specific features throughout the tournaments, from Twitter Moments and Twitter Q&As to hashflags and livestreaming

  • Twitter funded the two shows which led to some of the most picturesque broadcasts ever seen, creating a thrilling backdrop for our coverage

  • Major sponsors (Coca-Cola, T-Mobile, Budweiser, etc) joined in the collaboration as corporate sponsors which brought in significant revenue

  • FOX Sports continued to evolve social media integration into broadcast, which set the stage for future efforts at the World Series and Super Bowl

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