SALT LAKE CITY — Since the World Cup began, FOX aired games each and every day across the network's platforms and here on FOX 13. It's all been smooth, which is all due to the behind-the-scenes work that goes into scheduling the event from a broadcast perspective.
Former FOX executive Francisco Pazmino is currently a Vice President for IMG, but shared insight into what it takes to schedule something as massive as the World Cup.
“This is a month-long Super Bowl, this is a month-long World Series,” Pazmino explained. “You got a broadcaster in English, a broadcaster in Spanish. This is really the driver for everything else, right? Everything else is scheduled around a big sporting event because you’re going to take advantage of the audience.”
According to Pazmino, the rise of streaming has fundamentally changed how networks schedule around this marquee event.
“In the past, it was so difficult to kind of put together the pieces of the puzzle, that everything will fit nicely in a broadcast schedule," he said, "now you can take advantage of a streaming service, where you can add additional content to the streaming services.”
When talking about what would define success in broadcast after the World Cup, Pazmino emphasized ratings performance for games that don’t include the U.S. Men's National Team.
“The USA versus Paraguay, 18 million plus people watched that match on both Telemundo and FOX,” he explained. “That’s been by far the largest, the biggest US soccer match in history. And, okay, it’s the US, right? But how do you measure success? You have to see how the other matches (rate). Because when the US is not playing, are people going to be engaged? The Brazil match vs. Morocco had 10 million plus viewers on Fox, I mean that’s the highest non-US soccer match in the history of the US.”
Pazmino shared how smaller countries have already set records this tournament, mentioning Ecuador vs. Ivory Coast, with over 4 million viewers, which is now the most-watched soccer telecast on FS1.
It all means that this World Cup is already successful from a broadcast perspective and now has to build on its foundation.
