Live From FIFA World Cup: Fox Sports’ Digital Team Finds Big Success With Live Social Streams
During the Group Stage, Fox’s live Twitter show, FIFA World Cup NOW, pulled in 50 million views
Wednesday marks the first off day in the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It has been 17 consecutive days since the event got under way on Nov. 20. That’s 17 lengthy days and lots of hard work for the many broadcasters onsite in Doha. For the growing team at Fox Sports Digital, it’s a well-deserved breather.
Fox Sports Digital has been humming along like a steam train for the past two-plus weeks, with highlights of every goal, countless articles, and a robust schedule of live streams produced onsite in Qatar and distributed across the network’s social channels, website, and mobile app.
Fox Sports Digital crew members work with on-air talent to plan out content segments for an episode of FIFA World Cup NOW from Fox Sports’ set at the Doha Corniche in Qatar. (All photos: Fox Sports)
Most notably, Fox Sports has seen significant success from an ambitious live-streaming plan that delivers studio shows to the @FOXSoccer account on Twitter. According to Fox Sports, FIFA World Cup Now, the pre/postmatch show that streams exclusively to @FOXSoccer, garnered more than 50 million views on Twitter during the Group Stage. Shows surrounding the three USMNT Group Stage matches averaged a whopping 926,000 views; the remaining 88 shows average about 569,000.
By the end of the tournament, an incredible 128 live episodes of FIFA World Cup NOW will have been produced, a major chunk of the 160+ live shows produced exclusively for digital and social platforms.
“It’s definitely a grind,” says Michael Bucklin, SVP, Digital, Fox Sports, “but one of the things we generally believe is, these are ‘get to’ jobs, not ‘have to’ jobs. I think the team feels that way. They embrace that as a mantra and are excited to show up every day. A lot of times, I’ll try to get in early, and they’ll be in there before me. Plus, the coffee is really good here.”
THE USMNT ADVANCES!!!! 🤩🇺🇸@JimmyConrad, @SachaKljestan, @DamarcusBeasley, @CobiJones and @WarrenBarton2 discuss the match on #WCNow!https://t.co/4puUxp13wJ
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) November 29, 2022
The game plan for FIFA World Cup NOW is to be live for a 20-minute prematch show and then return for a 30-minute postmatch show. During the Group Stage, that meant being live nearly around the clock. This World Cup is the first to host four matches in a single Group Stage day, versus the previous three. During the 2018 Men’s World Cup (in Russia), Fox streamed one Twitter show per day. This requires a massive increase in inventory. Not to mention that during the Group Stage, there’s just over one hour between matches, meaning that FIFA World Cup NOW is essentially live for the entire break between matches.
From left: Jimmy Conrad, Warren Barton, and Sacha Klejestan are regular on-air contributors to FIFA World Cup NOW.
For Bucklin, setting a strategy for such a busy schedule means keeping program rundowns simple: give everyone on the team — from on-air talent to behind-the-scenes crew — clear, defined goals that allow easy repetition.
“We know exactly what we’re going to do every day,” he points out. “It’s a very simple formula. We try to be as creative within that formula as we can. You’re going to share every single goal of every single match in the World Cup. When that happens, it’s quick. You’re going to focus your creativity on what the copy is going to be or how you’re going to sell it on the website or the app, but you’re not going to spend any time thinking about what you have to cut.
“You can be more creative when you’re in a smaller box,” he continues. “When you create that smaller box, simpler rundowns, simpler social-content plans, simpler editorial plans, you can be significantly more creative in that smaller box. You also become more efficient.”
FIFA World Cup NOW — as well as live episodes of the daily State of the Union Podcast with Alexi Lalas and David Mosse — are overseen in Doha by Ricardo Perez-Selsky, head of production and tech operations, Fox Sports Digital. The operations side is also supported onsite by Head of Technical Operations John Marcus, Head of Production Operations Thomas Meason, Technical Op Chris Cheshire, Production Ops Carla Gutierrez and Erin Schechter, and Camera Operator Jeremy Benbow. The production side is led by Head of Digital and Social Production Nick Rago, who is working with producers Sean Sullivan and Ryan Bartlett.
Fox Sports Digital’s Ricardo Perez-Selsky in the digital team’s control room in Doha
Bucklin praises the efforts of Perez-Selsky, who joined Fox just over three years ago after a run at successful pop-culture–media company POPSUGAR. Perez-Selsky, Bucklin says, has “probably produced more live social streams than anyone alive” and “has just completely transformed what we’ve done.”
Bucklin adds, “We are just so clean with Ric. When we’re clean, we’re confident, and, when we’re confident, you can see it [on-air]. Our guys are having fun. They can always hear their producer cleanly in their ear. They can always see a clean program return so they know what’s on the screen so they can talk to it. Ric has brought this level of experience and expertise to our operation, [taking] us to the next level. I’ve been here for seven years and have done in the realm of a thousand live digital streams, social streams, and I feel confident this is, by far, the best we’ve ever been.”
Episodes of FIFA World Cup NOW regularly feature appearances by hosts Jimmy Conrad and Melissa Ortiz and former USMNT players Sacha Kljestan and DaMarcus Beasley.
Key to Fox Sports Digital’s success is the synergy between the linear-television and digital units at Fox’s Qatar facilities. According to Bucklin, digital plans are a key agenda item at content meetings every morning, led by Fox Sports Executive Producer, FIFA World Cup on Fox/VP, Production, David Neal and VP, Production, Zac Kenworthy. Says Bucklin, “In my seven years here, it is the most integrated that it has ever been.”
Additionally, in terms of facilities and staffing, Fox Sports’ digital presence onsite is larger than for any event in the broadcaster’s history. Fox Sports has built a reputation on its mega-sets designed to wow visitors and anchor live coverage of events ranging from the Super Bowl to the FIFA Men’s and Women’s World Cups. The teams outdid themselves at this event with a massive structure along the Doha Corniche. This World Cup marks the first time that the Digital unit has had a dedicated set in one of the broadcaster’s sets, as well as its own control room onsite. The live social streams also deploy the same graphics package used for the linear-television coverage (some elements were increased approximately 20% to suit screens on mobile devices).
Fox Sports’ Michael Bucklin (foreground) monitors a live stream in the digital team’s dedicated control room at the Fox set in Doha.
All that integration has produced a professional, broadcast-television quality in shows streaming to Twitter and the FOX Sports App.
“[President, Production and Operations/Executive Producer, Fox Sports] Brad Zager had a big vision for us: to have a very cohesive look and feel between linear and digital. Our set has exactly the same graphics package as the linear set; it looks like our linear set; just so beautiful. We have linear talent in every single one of our broadcasts. You’re going to see a lot of the same wipes, a lot of the same animations, a lot of the same transitions, a lot of the same player cars, and a lot of the same bugs.”
In addition to the live content, Fox Sports has set up a big team of producers and editors to chop up highlight clips from the live streams and share all the goals and key actions from every match of this World Cup. In Los Angeles, Fox Sports has also built a digital “war room” in the Fox Plaza building in Century City, the skyscraper infamous for its role as the fictional Nokotmi Plaza in 1988 action film Die Hard. There, producers, editors, and researchers scour all of Fox’s content while producers work with Tagboard gathering tweets, fan-submitted videos, and other content to pass along to the live-television broadcast unit, the studio shows, and the live social productions.
In Doha, Social Producer Fran Arthur helps facilitate work being done in Los Angeles by Tagboard and by Graphic Producers Jonathan Berger and Trip Westmoreland, B-roll Editors Torin Westfall and Bri Mellon, Designer Danny Devito and Social Media Managers Polly Marino and Alex Calvert.
In addition to all that content, another wing of the Fox Sports Digital team is producing the series Checking In With Chad Ochocinco, offering content for Fox social, website, and the FOX App that follows former NFL player Chad Ochocinco in his adventures around Doha. Working on that series is Producer Matt Modica; Director, Photography, Jon Hill; Social Media Manager Joe Scarpoine; and Editor Marty Colasuonno, who is working in L.A.
FOX Sports’ coverage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup resumes on Friday as the Quarterfinals begin with Croatia-Brazil at 10 p.m. ET. Television coverage on Fox begins with a prematch show at 9 a.m. On Twitter, FIFA World Cup Now will continue to stream before and after every match for the remainder of the tournament.