Establishment When the Fox Broadcasting Company launched in October 1986, the network's management, having seen how sports programming (in particular,
soccer events) played a critical role in the growth of the British satellite service
BSkyB, determined that sports would be the type of programming that would ascend Fox to a major network status the quickest; as a result, Fox tried to attract a
professional football package to the network. In 1987, after
ABC initially hedged on renewing its contract with the
National Football League (NFL) for the television rights to
Monday Night Football, Fox made an offer for the package at the same price that ABC had been paying at the time – about
$13 million per game. However, partly due to the fact that Fox had yet to establish itself as a major network, the NFL decided to resume negotiations with ABC, with the two parties eventually agreeing to a new contract, keeping what was the crown jewel of the league's television broadcasts on that network (where it remained until 2006, when
MNF moved to sister network
ESPN as part of a contract that also saw
NBC gain the
Sunday Night Football package). Six years later, the league's television contracts for the
National Football Conference (NFC) package,
American Football Conference (AFC) package, as well as the
Sunday night and
Monday night packages were up for renewal. Fox placed an aggressive bid for $1.58 billion to obtain the broadcast rights to the NFC package, which for decades had been held by
CBS. On December 17, 1993, the NFL selected Fox's bid and signed a four-year contract with Fox to award it the rights to televise regular season and playoff (as well as select preseason) games from the NFC, beginning with the
1994 season; the initial contract also included the exclusive U.S. television rights to broadcast
Super Bowl XXXI in 1997. The deal stripped
CBS of football telecasts for the first time since
1955. . Fox lured commentators
Pat Summerall,
John Madden,
Dick Stockton,
Matt Millen,
James Brown and
Terry Bradshaw, as well as many behind-the-scenes management and production personnel from
CBS Sports to staff the network's NFL coverage. The network's studio coverage originated from the
Fox Television Center in
Hollywood, California, later moving to the Fox Network Center (located on the
20th Century Fox backlot in
Century City) by 1998. In order to bolster viewership for the NFL telecasts, Fox parent
News Corporation decided to strike affiliation deals with broadcasting companies that owned stations affiliated with ABC, NBC and
CBS in order to raise the profile of Fox's affiliate body, which at the time mainly consisted of
UHF stations that (with some exceptions) had little to no prior history as a major
network affiliate, had weaker signals and largely did not carry as much value with advertisers as the
Big Three's affiliates. During the late spring and summer of 1994, Fox reached separate agreements with
New World Communications (a media company controlled by investor
Ronald Perelman, which Fox's station group
Fox Television Stations would purchase in July 1996) and
SF Broadcasting (a
joint venture between Fox and
Savoy Pictures that purchased four stations from Burnham Broadcasting through separate deals in July and August 1994) to switch a total of sixteen stations to Fox between September 1994 and September 1996 as affiliation contracts with those stations' existing network partners expired. The NFL television rights and affiliation deals firmly established Fox as the nation's
fourth major network. The network's relationship with the NFL would expand in
1997, when it began airing games and acquired partial ownership of
NFL Europe (although the partial ownership ended in 2000), an agreement which ended in
2006 when all games were moved to
NFL Network; the by-then renamed NFL Europa closed down the
next year. With a sports division now established, Fox decided to seek broadcast rights agreements with other major sports leagues. On September 9, 1994, Fox was awarded the broadcast television rights to the
National Hockey League (NHL) in a $155 million bid (amounting to $31 million annually); as a result, it became the first broadcast network to be awarded a national television contract to carry NHL games, which longtime NHL Commissioner
John Ziegler had long thought to be unattainable (NHL games had not aired regularly on a national broadcast network – outside of select championship and All-Star games, and
time buy basis airings of
ESPN telecasts on
ABC from
1992 to
1994 – since
NBC's telecast of the
1975 Stanley Cup Finals, as networks were not willing to commit to broadcasting a large number of games due to low viewership). Again, Fox outbid
CBS, which wanted to secure the rights as a result of losing the NFL to Fox, for the NHL package. Fox lost the NHL rights to
ABC Sports and
ESPN in
1999.
MLB, NASCAR and BCS acquisitions On November 7, 1995, Fox was awarded partial broadcast rights to
Major League Baseball (MLB) games, in a shared deal with
NBC (which had carried the
league's telecasts since 1947). Through the deal, which Fox paid a fraction of the amount ($115 million) that
CBS paid to obtain the rights effective with the
1990 season, Fox would broadcast approximately 16 regular season
Saturday afternoon games per season (unlike the previous
Baseball Network deal between NBC and ABC) and offered different game broadcasts shown on a regionalized basis (usually up to three per week). As part of a six-year renewal of this deal – valued at $2.5 billion – in September 2000, Fox Sports became the exclusive over-the-air broadcaster of Major League Baseball, giving it the exclusive rights to the
World Series beginning with the
2000 edition, as well as rights to the
All-Star Game, select
Division Series games and exclusive coverage of the
League Championship Series. Under a clause in the contract (which has not been exercised as there has not been a
labor dispute during the term of rights while Fox Sports has held the contract), if some of the scheduled games were cancelled by a strike or lockout, Fox would still pay Major League Baseball for a full slate of annual games, while the league in turn had to compensate Fox with additional telecasts. In 1998, Fox obtained the broadcast rights to the
Cotton Bowl Classic college football game. In
2007, Fox began airing most of the games of the
Bowl Championship Series, including the
BCS National Championship Game, in a deal worth close to $20 million per game. Due to a separate arrangement between
ABC and the
Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, events in the series that were held at the
Rose Bowl stadium – such as the
Rose Bowl Game and the
2010 BCS Championship – were excluded from the contract. On November 11, 1999, Fox and sister cable channel
FX were awarded rights to the
NASCAR Winston Cup Series and
Busch Series as part of
NASCAR's first centralized television rights deal, beginning in the 2001 season. The contract covered the first half of the season, with the second half of the season being aired by
NBC and
TNT. Rights to the
Daytona 500 and
Pepsi 400 alternated annually, with Fox airing the 500 in odd-numbered years, and the 400 in even-numbered years. Fox's first telecast was the
2001 Daytona 500—an event that would be marred by a final-lap crash that resulted in the
death of
Dale Earnhardt. Later that year, Fox acquired the motorsports cable network
Speedvision, and rebranded it in February 2002 as Speed Channel. Fox intended to use the network as an outlet for ancillary NASCAR content. In September 2002, Speed Channel bought out
ESPN's contract to televise the
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Fox lost the broadcasting rights to the Bowl Championship Series to
ESPN beginning in
2010. In response, Fox introduced a Saturday "game of the week" on FX in 2011, featuring games from the
Pac-12, the
Big 12 and
Conference USA (the rights to which were later assumed by Fox and Fox Sports 1); Fox also signed deals to carry two new championship games created through conference realignments that occurred in 2010 and 2011: the
Big Ten Conference Championship through 2016 (as part of Fox Sports' involvement with the
Big Ten Network), and the
Pac-12 Championship through 2017 on an alternating basis with ESPN. With the replacement of the BCS with the
College Football Playoff, Fox lost the broadcasting rights to the
2015 Cotton Bowl Classic onwards again to ESPN.
Present day In May 2010, Fox aired the
final of the
UEFA Champions League, marking the network's first ever soccer broadcast. In August 2011, Fox Sports announced it had reached a seven-year broadcast agreement with the
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), ending the
mixed martial arts promotion's relationship with
Spike. The deal included the rights to broadcast four live events in prime time or late night annually, as well as other UFC programming that would air on various Fox properties, including the Fox network (which aired its first UFC match in November 2011, the first time that the UFC aired an event on broadcast television), FX and Fuel TV. The contract expired in 2019, with the UFC moving its broadcast rights to
ESPN. On October 22, 2011,
FIFA announced that Fox Sports had acquired rights to air its tournaments beginning in 2015, including the
2015 and
2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the
2018 and
2022 FIFA World Cup. In February 2015, Fox's contract was extended to
2026 (which was ultimately awarded to a joint North American bid led by the United States), in what was reported to be compensation for the rescheduling of the 2022 tournament to late-November/mid-December (which will compete with the regular seasons of the NFL). On August 6, 2013, Fox Sports announced a 12-year deal to broadcast the championships of the
United States Golf Association (USGA), including the
U.S. Open, beginning in 2015. In 2016, Fox began to air
NHRA drag racing events—primarily on Fox Sports 1 and 2, and with selected flagship events airing on Fox proper. On May 12, 2014, Fox Sports announced a 7-year deal to broadcast
Major League Soccer (MLS). The deal included the rights to air the
MLS Cup on Fox in even numbered years. On July 24, 2017, the Big Ten Conference announced that it had reached six-year deals with Fox Sports and ESPN to hold rights to its football games beginning in the 2017 season, with Fox's package expanding on its involvement in BTN. As part of the contract, Fox's contract to run BTN was extended through 2032. On January 31, 2018, the NFL announced that Fox had acquired the sub-license for its
Thursday Night Football package under a five-year deal, beginning in the
2018 NFL season. The deal is reportedly worth an average of more than $660 million per year. On May 6, 2019, Fox Sports announced a multi-year broadcast deal with the new incarnation
XFL, which went on hiatus midway through its first season, but would return in 2023. In May 2019, Fox Sports partnered with
The Stars Group to launch co-branded
sports betting operations, including Fox Bet (which offers real-money sports betting where legal), as well as the free football prediction game
Fox Sports Super 6. As part of the partnership, Fox Corporation acquired a 4.99% minority stake in the company for $236 million, with an option to increase its stake to up to 50% within the next 10 years. The partnership made Fox the first major U.S. sports broadcaster to establish a sports betting operation, taking advantage of the repeal of the
Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. With the company's sale to
Flutter Entertainment, Fox would have an option in 2021 to acquire an 18.5% stake in its U.S. subsidiary
FanDuel Group. In June 2020, Fox exited its contract with the USGA and sold the remainder to previous rightsholder NBC. In June 2021, it was announced that Fox would be a minority investor in a new iteration of the
United States Football League (USFL), which would operate as a successor to
The Spring League. In November 2021, it was announced that Fox Sports had acquired English-language rights to
UEFA national team matches under a six-year deal from 2022 to 2028, replacing ESPN. This includes the
UEFA Nations League beginning in June 2022, tournaments such as
UEFA Euro 2024 and
2028, UEFA qualifiers for Euro and the FIFA World Cup, and UEFA-organized friendlies. In January 2022, Fox announced that it would sub-license portions of this package to
FuboTV, focusing on the Nations League and selected matches from the European Championships. In January 2022, Fox Sports reached an agreement with the
New York Racing Association for the rights to the
Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the
horse racing triple crown, through 2030. On February 6, 2024, Fox Sports announced a joint venture with
ESPN Inc. and
TNT Sports, named
Venu Sports, that would include the three organizations' main linear sports channels and associated media rights, beginning in fall 2024. The service was ultimately cancelled. On June 13, 2024, Fox Sports announced a multi-year deal to be the sole broadcaster of the
IndyCar Series and its subsidiary series
Indy NXT. On January 16, 2025, Fox Sports announced a multi-year deal with the
Saudi PIF-backed
LIV Golf, replacing
The CW's sports division as its broadcaster. On July 17, 2025, Fox Sports announced a content partnership with
Barstool Sports and its founder
Dave Portnoy, under which Barstool will produce a new daily studio program for FS1, Portnoy and other Barstool personalities will make appearances on Fox's college football pre-game show
Big Noon Kickoff, and the two units will also co-develop new digital content. ==Channels==