FUCK! Fox won the rights to ALL FIFA soccer events from 2015-2022

[charlie and algernon]

ZURICH -- Fox Sports won a bid for the rights to televise the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to American television viewers.

Fox will carry the 2018 event from Russia and the 2022 event from Qatar. Telemundo won the bidding for Spanish-language rights in the United States. Bidding was held Wednesday and Thursday and the announcement came Friday.

ESPN and Univision lost out after holding rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups.

The value of the new deals was not disclosed, according to The Associated Press. ESPN and Univision paid a combined $425 million for the existing deal.

An announcement is expected on Friday.

Fox will own the rights to all FIFA events from 2015 to 2022, including the men's World Cup in '18 and '22; the women's World Cup in '15 and '19; and all Under-20 and Under-17 matches.


http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/7130785/fox-sports-wins-bid-espn-nbc-televise-world

How much you wanna bet that they do NOT broadcast the matches live and instead show them all during prime time? :banghead:

As much as I hate ESPN for some of their biasness, they damn well know how to cover live sporting events. I've been a HUGE proponant that ESPN needs to take the Olympics away from NBC and broadcast the the games LIVE with actual experts who KNOW that sport.

And now they've lost the World Cup after 2014.... :banghead:

[joeybee12]

1. FOX getting anything is a huge disappointment...nt

[MrCoffee]

2. Support your local bar!

[Upton]

3. I would have preferred ESPN too

mostly because they finally went and hired announcers that really know the game like Martin Tyler and Ian Darke. Hopefully, Fox will continue along the same lines, and there's no reason to assume they won't since they use UK feeds for televising EPL and CL games. Sky Sports is owned by News Corp too. And I would think live WC games would be shown on lesser FOX channels like FSC and FSC+..

It's just really hard to speculate this far out on what all this means...other than to say it's a big loss for ESPN. Lets just hope it isn't one for those of us who follow the sport too..