With a new college football season comes a new wave of complaints over schools’ network placement. These are often particularly acute around weather delays. And the biggest issue there often comes at Fox, which, unlike ESPN and its panoply of networks, has one broadcast network, one well-distributed cable sports network (FS1), and another much-less-distributed cable sports network (FS2). Whenever games wind up on the latter, it’s an issue for many, and the latest case there came with UTEP-Nebraska Saturday thanks to a long weather delay in the previous Penn State-West Virginia game:
ℹ️📺 Our game will remain on FOX in Nebraska but will go to FS2 in other markets when Penn State-West Virginia resumes in a few minutes.
— Nebraska Huskers (@Huskers) August 31, 2024
FS1 was tied up with North Dakota at Iowa State, so that wasn’t an option for the overflow here around that weather delay in Morgantown. But it’s interesting that the much-more-distributed Fox Business wasn’t used. That channel has been used as a Fox Sports overflow channel in the past (particularly beginning in 2018 after repeated Pac-12 complaints about games bumped to FS2), including for Nebraska games. And their programming schedule has them only carrying informercials Saturday. But FS2, not Fox Business, was the play for Fox here outside of Nebraska.
How much of an impact is this? Well, as per a Sports Business Journal discussion of Nielsen cable carriage estimates from Austin Karp last July, FS1 was in 71.375 million homes at that point, higher even than ESPN for the first time. Meanwhile, FS2 was in just 51.729 million homes then.
The exact penetration of broadcast Fox is less clear. Recent Nielsen estimates have antenna-only homes as 17.31 million, so there are likely 90 million or more people who can get broadcast Fox (FS1 penetration + antenna-only + MVPD packages that don’t include FS1 but do include broadcast Fox). Thus, a drop from broadcast Fox to FS2 does seem likely to almost halve the potential viewership. (And that’s before any factoring in of people who get both, but don’t know to look for live sports on FS2.) And that explains why this got such a negative reaction from many. Here’s some of that:
Which means I can no longer watch the game! What am I paying for then? https://t.co/Sp2OlFBVcr
— Nate J. Hofer (@nhofer) August 31, 2024
So I have to upgrade my service to watch the game. That’s some 🐂
— Andy (@JDisWeird) August 31, 2024
Paying for Hulu to watch Husker games and now it just keeps going to Penn State.
— Anthony Landers (@twittvveet) August 31, 2024
This may be the first FS2 overflow of 2024, but it’s unlikely to be the last. But this does show just how much of a problem bumping games to FS2 can be for many. And it speaks to the challenges of rights deals with Fox and their one broadcast/mostly one cable network setup versus ESPN and their broadcast network, countless cable networks, and streaming options.
[@Huskers on X/Twitter]
