We here at SBN Soccer have a favorite whipping boy, and that is Fox Soccer. For the recently concluded Gold Cup, they recent trumpeted some pretty solid ratings, at least for them. They reported having nearly 1 million people watching their cable channel.
Gold Cup Was Ratings, Er, Gold For Univision
Now, those aren't bad numbers. In fact, the 1.43 rating represents the first time they've ever broken 1.0 and nearly doubles the previous record of .77 for the 2009 Gold Cup final between the United States and Mexico.
(If you sensed a big “but” coming, you were right.) But, Univision, the Spanish-language channel that is available in far more homes because it is not part of a premium cable package, reportedly had nearly 8 million viewers.
This isn’t to say that Fox Soccer did poorly, but rather to highlight what a missed opportunity this was for Fox. I’m sure there was some compelling reason to put the game on a premium channel (looks like it was reruns of Family Guy on the East Coast and local broadcasting on the West Coast), but Fox owns a lot of channels that aren’t relegated to the upper tier of your dial. Even if those Family Guy reruns are too valuable (and I’m willing to admit they probably are), why not put the game on FX?
The thing is, the only people that have Fox Soccer are hardcore fans. The beauty of a championship game between heated rivals like Mexico and the United States? Lots of casual fans want to watch.
Just speaking for myself, but I watched the game on Univision even though my Spanish is pretty spotty. I’m sure there were several hundred thousand, if not more, who did the same.
While it’s commendable that Fox continues to pay big money to carry soccer matches, it would be nice if they stopped treating it like a specialty sport. People want to watch this stuff. We should probably let them.
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