(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Fox Sports broadcaster Fernando Fiore spent the hours after the U.S. failed to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in October interviewing dejected players about their stunning 2-1 loss to Trinidad and Tobago. It was the most embarrassing moment for U.S. soccer in more than 30 years. A long day’s work over, Fiore, a veteran soccer announcer, returned to his hotel in Trinidad. Only then did his thoughts turn to his employer. “That’s when I realized: Oh, my God, we don’t have the U.S. national team.”
Seven years earlier, Fox had paid a record $400 million to pry away the English-language rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups from Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN/ABC. A big draw was the U.S. team, which accounted for four of the five most-watched matches on ESPN/ABC during the 2014 tournament. In October a person close to Fox estimated that U.S. soccer’s absence could cost the network $10 million to $20 million in ad sales. While sales are on target so far, the source says, prices for spots in the last-minute market could suffer.
Telemundo, the Spanish-language broadcast network owned by NBCUniversal, is also grieving the loss. It paid about $600 million for the 2018 and 2022 competitions, outbidding Univision Communications Inc., which had aired the World Cup since 1970. The U.S. team isn’t as important to the Spanish-language audience, but its failure was a disappointment. In 2014 viewership was 44 percent higher for matches featuring the U.S. team than for other early-round games on Univision.
The U.S. collapse makes the Mexican national team the main attraction for Fox and Telemundo, setting up an intense competition for tens of millions of bilingual viewers. America’s fast-growing Hispanic population is the most obvious audience to court, especially as viewing habits change. Thirty-six percent, or 21 million, of the 58 million Hispanics in the U.S. are fluent in English and Spanish, according to the Pew Research Center, a number that jumps to 50 percent for second-generation Americans. Fifty-four percent of all Hispanics in the country consume news weekly in both languages.
“The bilingual audience is a battlefield,” says John Guppy, founder of Gilt Edge Soccer Marketing. “I bet you both Telemundo and Fox feel like they can win a decent share.”
The morning after the U.S. loss, Fox Sports President Eric Shanks and John Entz, head of production, met with their senior soccer staff in Los Angeles. Their message: Full speed ahead. Fox considered Mexico a second home team and had been preparing expansive coverage of “El Tri,” as the team is known, referring to its tricolor flag.
“Because Mexico had always been Team 1B in our planning, we already had a plan in place when the U.S. team was eliminated,” said World Cup executive producer David Neal, who spent 18 months at Univision before joining Fox. “It was a luxury for us not having to start from ground zero.”
To court the team’s fans, Fox has hired a number of journalists and executives well-versed in Spanish-language soccer coverage. The lineup includes former Mexico defender Mariano Trujillo; Jorge Pérez-Navarro, a longtime play-by-play voice of Univision; Rodolfo Landeros, a journalist with deep connections to Mexico’s players; and Fiore, a well-known studio analyst who had been at Univision.
Fiore’s on-camera antics are familiar to those who watch Spanish-language soccer broadcasts. Less so to his new Fox colleagues. During one of his early broadcasts, Fiore walked off the set in feigned frustration with co-hosts Alexi Lalas and Herculez Gomez. He was kidding; it was a stunt he’d pulled before at other networks. Lalas and Gomez, however, thought he was genuinely offended, and after an awkward silence, the telecast cut to commercial.
“In my previous job they knew my style, I could leave in the middle and they knew,” Fiore said. “Culturally, that’s a part of us.”
Citing internal research, Telemundo says 1 in 4 non-Latino soccer fans plans to watch the World Cup in Spanish. “Listening to soccer in a Romance language just works,” says Jim Bell, executive producer of Telemundo’s World Cup coverage. “You can follow the action, the names are the same, and gol is ‘goal.’ ” The cable network is also banking on the distinctive style of its announcers, including lead play-by-play man Andrés Cantor, famous for his elongated goal calls. “We bring passion and excitement to the play-by-play that is very different from our English-speaking counterparts,” says Cantor, who called World Cup games for Univision in 1990, 1994, and 1998. After those tournaments, he says, English-only speakers told him they preferred watching games in Spanish.
Telemundo is looking to its corporate parent, NBCUniversal, to get in front of bilingual viewers. Cantor appeared in a 10-second promo during NBC’s coverage of the Super Bowl in February, delivering his signature “goooaaal” call, then dropping his microphone. It was technically a Spanish-language ad—the network is contractually barred from English-language promotion—but its target audience was the entire soccer-watching population. “We’re taking over from a previous incumbent who had these rights for so long,” says Eli Velazquez, executive vice president for programming at Telemundo Deportes. “We need to make sure that everyone knows.”
The network’s slogan for the World Cup is “Lo vivimos juntos” (“We live it together”). The idea, says Telemundo Deportes President Ray Warren, is that families watching together will turn to the Spanish broadcaster. “It’s easier for bilinguals to go to Spanish-language telecasts,” he says. “Dad’s watching it. Grandpa’s watching it. And Uncle José is watching it. So we’ve got an advantage there.”
But as Gilt Edge’s Guppy sees it, Fox has the advantage with coveted younger audiences. “If you are a 19-year-old bilingual, bicultural, frankly you are not going to sit down and watch the full two-hour match with regularity,” he says. “You are going to watch the highlights. You are going to do it over your phone. I think those people may end up going to Fox.” —With Lucas Shaw
To contact the authors of this story: Eben Novy-Williams in New York at enovywilliam@bloomberg.net, Ira Boudway in New York at iboudway@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Janet Paskin at jpaskin@bloomberg.net, Dimitra Kessenides
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