News Corp to challenge ESPN?

What you're talking about is appealing to a very small niche. ESPN didn't really take off until it had the NFL and, later, the MLB deal.

The only way one of those networks challenge ESPN is if they have a deal with MLB or the NFL. I recall Comcast making a big push for the Thursday night package on Versus a number of years back, before the NFL decided to put those games on NFL Network.

 

I guess my question is with Fox already in business with the NFL and MLB, what are the odds it can make a deal to show some games in those leagues? It should have the means to broadcast some quality college sports and soccer and might have the money to hire some big names away from ESPN, so if he can get some of the major pro sports Rupert might have something.

 

No, ESPN was getting pretty far before it started showing NFL games in 1987.

There are a lot of sports out there. Everyone assumes ESPN can't be beaten. And yet just recently other outlets have won the Olympics, MLB playoffs, NBA playoffs, NCAA tournament, NHL season and playoffs, World Cup (after 2014), PAC-12 and Big 10 football championships, and lots else. Except for the NHL, these were all things ESPN wanted and did not get.

It won't be easy, but I think Murdoch knows that. It is certainly possible, though, to find other programming. To use my soccer example -- if you're building a whole channel around it? No. If it's part of a broad inventory of live action programming? Then it's helpful.

 

Fox already owns a bunch of regional sports networks. So it also faces a problem of competing against itself. If it's summer in Detroit, are fans going to watch whatever Fox National has on, or the Tigers game?
There's no question Fox has the resources to do this. And there's certainly enough inventory of sports events to go around. But I wonder if they can really make money off it. I assume they plan on packaging it with Fox News to get the carriage fees from franchise owners.

 

Just when you thought it was impossible to root for ESPN.

 

Sarah Palin has some sports broadcasting experience. ;D

 

Palin and Glenn Rice to counter PTI?

 

Only if Cinemax is starting a late-night sports channel.

 

You think I could pitch my show idea to them where you take a group of guys that are educated on the sport enough to be play-by-play announcers and "color" guys, but give it more of a MST5K feel...and add beer.

 

Where do I send my resume?

 

Sky Sports does this in the UK with their soccer broadcasts. They pick a random fan from each team and put them into a broadcast booth to "call" a match. I don't know where it airs back there (is there a Sky Sports Ocho?) but Fox Soccer would broadcast them on occasion and they were simultaneously humorous, awful and impossible to decipher.

 

Yeah, I think it would be better to have neutral guys call the game more than fans...but yeah, being able to speak English (not the Queen's English, mind you) would have to be a trait, otherwise, like you said, it becomes a shitshow.