Media conglomerate News Corporation will unveil its new US national sports channels to advertisers in early March in an effort to attract viewers and advertisers from sports broadcaster ESPN, according to Reuters.
The news agency reports News Corp’s Fox Corp unit will soon send advertisers invitations to its first sports “upfront” presentation. The presentation will see it make sales pitches for both its 22 regional sports channels and its new Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2 national channels.
Fox plans to convert its motorsport cable television channel Speed into Fox Sports 1, while extreme sports channel Fuel would be relaunched as Fox Sports 2. Citing two people with knowledge of the launch Reuters reports the two new channels are expected to begin broadcasting in August.
Carrying national sports would allow Fox to charge more to the cable and satellite operators who carry its channels and expand its carriage to more homes, allowing it to sell higher priced advertising.
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association reports ESPN currently gets $5.13 (€3.8) for each subscriber and is carried in well over 101 million homes. Fox will reportedly initially ask for 90 cents to $1 per subscriber for its Fox Sports 1 channel.