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More platforms to carry Fox Sports Go

Three years after launching its streaming app, Fox Sports is close to deals with platforms such as Apple TV, Roku, Xbox and Chromecast. Fox Sports says that it expects to make Fox Sports Go available on these services before its first college football telecast this season, Sept. 2.

The deal shows the growing importance of “connected devices” to sports networks, as ESPN and NBC Sports Group already have their apps running on these services. Sources say these types of deals generally bring a 10-20 percent jump in streaming activity for apps such as WatchESPN, NBC Sports Live Extra and Fox Sports Go.

Fox Sports Go on Apple TV will allow viewing of four events at once.
“Connected devices are a growing space,” said Clark Pierce, Fox Sports’ senior vice president of TV Everywhere. “It started with services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Consumers were getting a Roku so that they could get Netflix.”

The deal means that Fox’s productions of the NFL and MLB playoffs will be available on these devices, which stream the apps to full-size televisions. But, more importantly, it means that some daytime programming to which Fox holds rights, like UEFA Champions League and the Bundesliga, will be available, too.

“Any time you can have Messi and Ronaldo on during work hours, you’re going to see some big numbers,” Pierce said. “The cool thing to me about connected devices is that programming goes to a bigger screen than most younger viewers typically use — mobile phones or tablets or laptops. It’s a bigger canvas. We can do some more things.”

Fox Sports Go completed a soft launch on Roku on Aug. 12, but it requires customers to search for Fox Sports Go in order to find it. Despite this, the app has had more than 15,000 downloads in the first four days since the soft launch.

The most interesting deal is with Apple TV, which will have both a two-screen and a four-screen mode at launch, allowing people to watch up to four events at the same time. Pierce said the four-screen mode eventually will be available on all connected devices.

In some cases, Fox has been a first-mover in the digital space. For example, it is the only company to have local streaming deals in place with MLB, the NBA and NHL. But it seemed to drag its feet in doing deals with platforms like Apple TV and Roku.

“We were focused on making sure that the product worked well on the web, on mobile phones and on tablets,” Pierce said. “Connected devices were a priority, but we had other things ahead of it. We didn’t really see a point in terms of spreading ourselves too thin just to get on those platforms until we had the product that needed to be on those early platforms.”

— John Ourand

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