By WILLIAM LAUNDER
News Corp NWSA +2.37% .'s Fox said it will launch its long-anticipated Fox Sports 1 network on Aug. 17, with content ranging from Nascar races to college basketball.
Associated Press
Terry Bradshaw, left, and Regis Philbin at Tuesday's news conference announcing Fox's new sports network.
The launch of a national sports cable channel culminates a more than decade-long effort by Fox to establish itself as a destination for televised sports, a market that has long been dominated by Walt Disney Co.'sDIS +1.22% juggernaut ESPN network.
Fox has in recent years invested heavily in sports programming, such as current and future rights to Major League Baseball and World Cup Soccer, both of which will provide some of the content for the new network.
"We believe we have amassed enough live events … where we have scale, where we can have significance and where we can become a major player in the market," Randy Freer, co-president of Fox Sports Media Group, said during a news conference Tuesday to introduce the network .
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Speaking earlier Tuesday at an investment conference, News Corp.'s Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey warned that the new network wouldn't immediately be profitable, but said any losses would be "nothing like what we would incur" if building a network "from scratch."
The launch comes amid surging costs for sports programming, which is prized by advertisers because it is typically watched live and is therefore largely immune to video recordings, which encourage fast forwarding of commercials. The genre's loyal male audiences also tend to be the types of big consumers targeted by advertisers.
The new channel is being launched through a rebranding of Fox's existing Speed network, a niche cable channel dedicated to motor sports. As a result, Fox Sports 1 will be available in around 90 million homes, according to Fox. That is about 90% of the pay-TV universe, and eliminates one of the main challenges in creating a new channel from scratch: securing distribution deals with pay-TV operators.
Fox executives said they would negotiate to get higher carriage fees charged for the new network when Speed's current affiliate deals come up for renewal. Speed currently charges around 22 cents per subscriber, according to data from SNL Kagan, ranking it far below the more than $5 per subscriber commanded on average by ESPN.
At the news conference, Fox executives were frank about the competition posed by ESPN.
"ESPN is a machine. They have very consistent ratings and very substantial revenue," said Bill Wanger, Fox Sports' executive vice president of programming and research.
Mr. Carey earlier on Tuesday told investors that Fox wasn't "trying to beat ESPN. That wouldn't make sense to me." He said demand for sports content was robust enough for Fox to build a multi-billion dollar business around Fox Sports 1 without competing head-on with ESPN.
Executives said Fox would transition the best of its soccer content including UEFA Champions League and Europa Cup Games, and beginning in 2015, FIFA World Cup competitions, to the new network. Mr. Freer suggested that Fox Soccer will likely be rebranded into another kind of network, with announcement coming as soon as later this year. The company is considering rebranding the niche Fox Soccer channel to an entertainment network, such as a second FX channel.
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