Fox Sports likes tinkering with their NFL scorebug. Over the years we’ve seen many iterations of the scorebug with most years it being a small box on the upper left hand corner of the screen. There was also a stretch where Fox used the top bar across viewers’ screens that contained all of the relevant information.
This year Fox has gone a completely different direction as seen in their preseason debut telecast between the Bengals and Redskins.
As you can see above, Fox is going with a bar across the bottom of the screen with bright backgrounds for the team names and a very simplified look.
The response from NFL fans was mostly mixed.
a little too much team color (its distracting) but otherwise i love the Fox scorebug pic.twitter.com/xGikO1Q1k8
— Brandon Moore ™️ (@BMooreCreativ) August 27, 2017
@awfulannouncing I do not like the new FOX NFL scorebug
— DrewWinthrop👽📻 (@drew42w) August 27, 2017
The scorebug on a sports telecast should always be on the bottom of the screen. Glad to see FOX catch up on this.
— SFL Commissioner (@sflone) August 27, 2017
This is probably the most tame FOX Sports scorebug I've ever seen. pic.twitter.com/UGBeCRuZYb
— Astro-Creep (@JOrtega95) August 27, 2017
https://twitter.com/ryanwaldis/status/901875402762850304
https://twitter.com/ChrisNovakBECB/status/901864956865413120
For those who didn't like how high Fox's NFL graphics were… here's why pic.twitter.com/zQlGVtN9uA
— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) August 28, 2017
The biggest takeaway just might be that it doesn’t really look like Fox because it is so stripped down. Pretty much all of their competitors are now using a scorebug along the bottom of the screen for NFL games so perhaps this is Fox aligning themselves with the other networks to give a more uniform presentation for the NFL.
