Fox Sports continues its quest to take over as many college football TV windows as possible Friday night, when No. 20 Arizona visits No. 14 Kansas State for a prime-time contest on the broadcaster’s main network channel.
The game kicks off a 12-game Friday night slate on Fox this fall, featuring schools from the Big Ten, Big 12, and Mountain West. While Friday night games are not uncommon in college football, they have typically aired on cable channels or streamers, not networks’ primary over-the-air offering. The move gives Fox another significant game window, in addition to its weekly Big Noon Saturday matchup.
College football is replacing WWE SmackDown, which consistently drew between 2 million and 2.5 million viewers on Fox, but is heading to USA Network as part of a five-year, $1.4 billion deal. Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill expects college football to draw similar numbers, if not slightly better.
“Because this will be a three-and-a-half-hour event rather than a two-hour SmackDown, even if the viewership is the same, we have a better monetization opportunity there just because of the longer duration and therefore more commercials,” Mulvihill says.
Game Theory
The Fox Friday night schedule doesn’t feature marquee brands like Michigan, Ohio State, or Penn State, mainly due to the Big Ten’s $7 billion media-rights deals.
“We had to be really respectful of the fact that when CBS and NBC did their Big Ten deals, they did it with the expectation that they would be able to draft a top-three game every week,” Mulvihill says, referencing the complex system Big Ten broadcast partners use to pick games. “So, we have to make sure we’re not taking games for Friday that should probably be in the Saturday draft pool.” That meant a lot of back and forth with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti this spring.
Without the top Midwest schools available, Fox is relying on West Coast schools to fill the schedule. “We’re never really going to be able to do a West Coast home game in the noon window,” Mulvihill says. “So you really want to take this as our opportunity to do a home game at USC, Oregon, the Rose Bowl, etc.”
While most games will begin at 8 or 9 p.m. ET, Rutgers will visit USC on Oct. 25 for an 11 p.m. ET kickoff. Fox chose that late-night start to directly follow Game 1 of the World Series, which could have 10 million viewers or more.
Looking Ahead
Fox should be able to improve its Friday night college football schedule in Year 2, but drastic changes like implementing flex scheduling are not on the horizon.
“That would be really hard, really, really hard,” Mulvihill says. “I think we’re a long way away from asking the schools to have any Saturday-to-Friday flexibility.”
