Tennis Channel’s Lacoste tie-in
By Patricia Riedman
Fans Drive Sports
to New Levels
says these stats helped attract advertisers such as Procter &
Gamble Co.’s Gillette, which inked a six-figure deal to launch
its new ProGlide razor. As part of the ad package, which starts
June 6, ProGlide “stunt” shaving demonstrations will be shown
throughout the day on Fox Soccer as a series of short vignettes
starring the hosts of Fox Soccer’s weekly call-in show “Fox
Football Fone-In.”
P&G is “coming to us because of our ability to reach these
young male demographics,” Mr. Nathanson says.
Fox Soccer is having a banner year for ad revenue, says
Mike Petruzzi, VP-ad sales, adding, “We’re up significantly year
over year. It speaks to the growth of soccer in the U.S.”
The biggest soccer event of this year is the 2010 FIFA World
Cup, which kicks off in South Africa on June 11. While Fox
Soccer doesn’t own the live programming rights (in the U.S.,
the English-language broadcast will run live on ESPN), Fox is
covering it from the sidelines with “Ticket to South Africa,” a
nightly studio show recapping the day’s games and providing
in-depth analysis with soccer experts such as Andy Gray.
The buzz about the World Cup, however, is definitely fuel-
ing interest in soccer, Mr. Petruzzi says, as the network re-
ported that its first-quarter ratings were up 71 percent for
prime time, according to Nielsen. The network is trying to
funnel that interest into events such as the UEFA Champions
League, which it runs, with its sibling network Fox Sports
showing the championship live from Madrid in May. In addi-
tion, Fox Soccer offers premium footage available online. The
majority of World Cup athletes also play in leagues Fox Soccer
covers, Mr. Petruzzi says, adding, “We’re not a once-every-
four-years event.”
In March, to satiate its most ardent fans, Fox launched Fox
Soccer Plus, a premium soccer channel designed to comple-
ment Fox Soccer. Its content includes the Coca-Cola Champi-
onship and another English league as well as rugby.
Fox parent News Corp. sees the value and return of the pre-
mium product for fans and advertisers, Mr. Nathanson says.
“The passion and success for soccer across the globe is making
its way in a big way across the U.S.”
Another network defying the sluggish economy is the Ten-
nis Channel, which debuted in 2003 and is now in more than
28 million homes, reaching upward of 35 million homes dur-
(Continued on page C82)
In financially rocky times, people might curb frivolous indulgences—but passions endure. Cable sports networks
are proof, with growing audiences and ad revenues that defy
the depressed advertising landscape. As die-hard fans and
sports enthusiasts revel in 24/7 sports programming and digital content, advertisers realize these are efficient places to
reach key audiences.
Viewers could see more than 43,700 hours of live sporting events on broadcast and cable television in 2009, according to Nielsen Co.’s recent report, “The Changing Face of
Sports Media.” The report credits high-definition content for
making the medium more attractive to viewers, while the real-time nature of sports appealed to advertisers, which spent $7.6
billion on sports programming last year.
“Live sports will always have a great place in the entertain-
ment industry,” says Steve Herbst, exec VP-general manager,
CBS College Sports Network. “I think you’ve seen from the
events over the last six months—be it the Super Bowl, the
NCAA tournament or the Masters Golf Tournament—these
events still carry the day in many ways. That’s why sports is al-
ways going to be OK, even in tough economic times.”
CBS College Sports Network, a division of CBS Sports,
boasts 38 million subscribers, up 38 percent in the past 12
months. CBS College Sports shows rebroadcasts of events that
air live on CBS, and it also runs about 300 live events a year
from the Mountain West Conference, Conference USA and
the Atlantic 10, as well as U.S. Military Academy and U.S.
Naval Academy games.
After CBS-TV aired the 2010 NCAA basketball champi-
onship game April 5 live during prime time, and Duke beat
Butler 61-59 in the final few seconds, CBS College Sports Net-
work did exclusive encore telecasts. Watching the game, “you
could write a book about what hung in the balance those last
few seconds,” Mr. Herbst says. Multiple airings of key games
are a way to help us “try to capture the passion of sports for
this dedicated fan base.”
CBS College Sports connects with its fans on a grass-
roots level. In 2007, it partnered with Powerade and the Na-
tional Intramural-Recreational Sports Association in a test
of eight colleges’ intramural sports events. Today 53 schools
are posting their intramural footage to a dedicated Web site,
cbsintramurals.com/powerade.
Sportsman Channel uses its sibling print properties to offer
multimedia ad buys.
