FOX Sports, the leader in live sports and official FIFA World Cup English-language broadcast rights-holder through 2026, expanded its relationship with Twitter for this year’s tournament in Qatar to bring fans an exclusive VIP experience unlike anything that’s been seen before on the platform with its WORLD CUP NOW pre- and postgame show.
Streamed live exclusively via FOX Soccer’s Twitter channel (@FOXSoccer) before and after all 64 matches of the 2022 tournament, WORLD CUP NOW engaged millions of fans throughout the world’s greatest sporting event with expert analysis and insight from former national team stars DaMarcus Beasley, Jimmy Conrad, Sacha Kljestan and Melissa Ortiz. The show also featured regular appearances from FOX Sports' soccer analysts and personalities Maurice Edu, Carli Lloyd, Warren Barton, Cobi Jones, Kate Abdo and Landon Donovan, among others.
The pregame shows featured live commentary, as well as in-stadium feeds, taking fans inside the action with their favorite players as they got set for competition on the world’s biggest stage. After each match, the postgame shows included highlights of every magical moment, jersey swap and celebration, complete with instant reaction and best-in-class analysis from the some of the biggest names in the sport.
Producing live streaming content is difficult no matter the setting or subject – but executing around a global event of this magnitude, with 64 live matches in total over 29 days, an 11-hour time difference and 8,000 miles separating the crews? There’s nothing else like it in the sports world that can compare, which required an ambitious plan and a dedicated and talented team to bring WORLD CUP NOW to life.
From the get-go, FOX Sports’ vision was to have a cohesive look and feel between the broadcast television coverage and digital. WORLD CUP NOW broadcast from a brand new, state-of-the-art set located along the Corniche waterfront promenade in Doha, Qatar, and incorporated the same graphics package as what fans saw on TV, including the same wipes, animations, transitions and player cards to deliver a TV broadcast-quality show on a social media platform.
Without a doubt, FOX Sports’ digital team rose to the challenge – delivering more than 60 hours of original content over 129 unique, live-streamed WORLD CUP NOW shows originating steps away from Doha’s West Bay, backed by a cutting-edge studio set and graphics package and hosted by legends of the beautiful game, all while leaning on a talented team of producers who provided round-the-clock support from the FOX lot in Los Angeles. Despite the challenges, the workflow didn’t sacrifice on quality, with the team creating efficiencies that helped ensure a best-in-class product that earned glowing reviews from industry experts and fans alike.
All told, FOX Sports brought forward a new standard for what live-streaming content around a major sporting event should look like and executed with excellence every step of the way.
FOX Sports’ delivery of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, a crown jewel of the network’s unrivaled portfolio of international soccer tournaments, generated record-setting results across its digital platforms, including Twitter with its dynamically integrated WORLD CUP NOW show. The pre- and postgame shows generated over 88.4 million views exclusively on the platform to become FOX Sports’ most-viewed digital content series ever.
FOX Sports’ epic digital production averaged 685,000 viewers over 129 live shows, with pre- and postgame shows for the legendary 2022 FIFA World Cup Final between Lionel Messi and Argentina and Kylian Mbappé and France generating over 5.8 million views alone. Locking in on fans of the United States Men’s National Team, WORLD CUP NOW produced an average audience of 982,800 viewers for shows around the four USMNT matches.
The presence of WORLD CUP NOW on Twitter played a critical role in driving viewers to streams of each match, resulting in the most-streamed FIFA World Cup in FOX Sports history, with match streams on FOX Sports platforms amassing over 2.75 billion streaming minutes, and finishing with an average minute audience of 287,064, up 19% vs. 2018.
The impressive results set the bar at a new high and forged a blueprint for what success will look like going forward for FOX Sports’ digital team, with the network planning to duplicate the efforts for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and beyond.
