ESPN vs. Fox Sports

ESPN has always been known to broadcast the biggest sporting events and also have many different talk shows live throughout the day. They are well known for shows such as PTI, Around the Horn and over the last year, the Scott Van Pelt late night show. Recently, Fox Sports has been trying to work their way in as the most popular sports broadcasting company out there. One thing that Fox has added to their artillery is putting on FS1. This broadcast many games from various sports.

While ESPN and Fox have had various arguments about who is the “world wide leader in sports”, ESPN dominates the markets and have even proven to Fox that in multiple segments they have beaten out Fox. PTI and around the horn have taken over the 5PM hour over segments that Fox has to offer. When it comes to my view on this topic, I think I can speak for many other people as well. When I think of sports, I instantly think of ESPN for many different reasons. ESPN has been around since 1979 and they are known as “The World Wide Leader of Sports.” I know that any time our TV is on at our house it is always on ESPN. When I think of Fox, the first thing that comes to mind is not sports. Instead, I think of a company that is just known for their news and broadcasting movies.

Some may be wondering what this has to do in terms of Public Relations? PR teams from both Fox and ESPN have been in constant competition with each other trying to sell their brand as the best sports broadcasting network. Ways that they become bigger and grow over one another is by winning TV time for big time games and events. For example, Fox will be broadcasting the Super Bowl this year, which is a huge win over ESPN. This will allow them to get their brand out there.

When Fox sports launched in 2013, they only had a few programming options to go with such as, UFC, NASCAR Trucks, Pac-12 and Big12 college football and Big East college basketball. Now I do not know how familiar you are with sports, but using those programs to try and compete with ESPN, would be like me trying to order tacos at Subway. Its just not possible. While ESPN is still a bit ahead of Fox Sports, they better watch their back in the near future. According to Forbes, “Fox Sports 1 is making progress on catching up to ESPN.” In their second year on TV, FS1 picked up quite a few new programming options to help them compete with ESPN. They had the same programs listed above, but they added; Major League Baseball, Gold Cup soccer, Women’s World Cup and other various NASCAR events. It will be very interesting to see what the sports network turns into within the next 5-10 years.