Much of the discussion surrounding Fox’s U.S. English-language coverage of Sunday’s Copa América final was about their questionable handling of the fan crush outside the stadium, which led to a 90-minute delay for the kickoff. But Fox also encountered major technical problems during the match itself.
And now, they’ve offered an explanation for those.
Once that match began, Fox encountered plenty of technical issues. First, a video freeze occurred, followed by out-of-sync audio and video. There’s now a comment on what happened there.
The broadcast issues here started with Fox’s video feed freezing at 11:45 in the first half. The video resumed from a different feed, which was out of sync with the audio. And that sync-up wasn’t fixed until close to halftime (and Shakira’s halftime concert).
Meanwhile, Spanish-language U.S. broadcaster Univision didn’t appear to have a sync issue. But, as per Jazz Tancay of Variety, the Fox issues were about problems with the initial world feed, leading to a switch to a backup pool feed that wasn’t adequately synced:
Sources close to the situation said the problem stemmed from the pool feed video provided by the tournament to all broadcast partners. The tournament’s “World Feed” video went down, forcing Fox Sports and other partners to use a backup feed that required on-the-fly adjustments to the audio in order to sync up with the live video, the source said.
It’s unclear why the Fox feed was affected and the Univision one wasn’t. But the issues here were certainly notable:
It’s not just you with the audio and video syncing issues on the Fox Copa América Final broadcast. ⚽️📺😵💫 pic.twitter.com/xGT1mLsWgk
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 15, 2024
And they sparked quite a bit of comment:
Commentating is like 5 seconds ahead for everyone else? #CopaAmerica
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 15, 2024
I was wondering. I think the announcers are now deliberately slowing down their commentary to reduce the synch problem https://t.co/q93jHpS9nY
— David Clinch (@DavidClinchNews) July 15, 2024
As discussed above, Fox has also been under fire for its coverage of the pre-match fan crush. That crush, which even impacted match analyst Stu Holden’s family, was covered in very loose terms on their broadcast, including with studio analyst Alexi Lalas saying, “I think this shows there is a passion for this game.”
That also ties into some of the broader discussion of Fox’s coverage of Euro 2024 and (particularly) Copa América 2024 this summer. That coverage has taken criticism from many quarters. But the technical issues here, on the actual match that they’ve been so apparent that their focus is on, were a further blow to the overall state of their coverage. They’ve been drawing tremendous ratings and look likely to continue that from Sunday’s finals, but there are still a lot of questions about their overall approach to soccer coverage.
