Fox, ESPN Will Carry All 10 EPL Matches On Final Day Of League's Season

Fox Sports is set to ramp up attention around EPL Relegation Sunday, the league's final day of the season, and today announced plans for coverage of nine games under the "Survival Sunday" banner. All 10 EPL matches will be carried live in the U.S. on May 13 at 10:00am ET, the final day of the league's season. Fox will carry nine of the matches simultaneously on its cable channels and broadband sites, including FX, Speed, FSN, Fuel TV, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Deportes, FoxSoccer.com and Fox Soccer 2Go. Each channel, other than Speed, will carry pre-match coverage starting at 9:30am. ESPN, which will carry the other match, has first choice of matches. "This is like a road block of the Premier League on TV," said Fox Soccer Exec VP & GM David Nathanson. "Nothing like this has ever been done before, not even in the U.K." No games have been assigned to any specific outlet yet. Fox holds EPL rights already, so it did not have to get specific buy-in from the league, though Fox said the EPL is supportive. Rather, Nathanson said, Fox spent the past six to eight months convincing its internal networks that such a programming move would be a good idea. "How do we measure success for this," Nathanson asked. "The mere fact that this is happening makes it successful."