Live From FIFA Women's World Cup: FOX Sports' Live Social and Digital Content Plan Grows, Even Despite Time Difference With US Market

Live From FIFA Women's World Cup: FOX Sports' Live Social and Digital Content Plan Grows, Even Despite Time Difference With US Market Deeper integration of tech from Tagboard, Riedel brings added efficiency By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Wednesday, August 2, 2023 - 3:56 pm

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FIFA World Cups are wildly exciting projects to work on. But like any major global international sporting event, fruitful opportunities are always met with a set of major challenges. There's perhaps no bigger challenge for FOX Sports at the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup than the time difference.

FOX Sports is producing its live social and digital show, World Cup NOW, from a set in Sydney on the banks of Sydney Harbour. (Photos Courtesy of FOX Sports)

With many of the matches in Australia and New Zealand happening during overnight hours across the United States, it begged the question: would the aggressive, live programming plan that FOX Sports Digital's team flexed during the men's FIFA World Cup in Doha last year even make sense this time around?

The answer was a resounding yes. Not only did FOX Sports Digital choose not to back off, they decided to go even bigger and harder.

We're always going to stay true to live, says Ricardo Perez-Selsky, Sr. Director, Digital Production Operations, FOX Sports.

@MelissaMOrtiz was every Colombia fan after that late winner @stuholden | @JimmyConrad | @CarliLloyd pic.twitter.com/qEtjIusFDD

- FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 30, 2023

From a gorgeous set at the Hickson Road Reserve under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, FOX Sports is back with its live social show, World Cup NOW, on Twitter (X) and the FOX Sports App as well as clipping and producing a wealth of original content, bringing wall-to-wall coverage of the entire FIFA Women's World Cup, all while offering daily coverage on the status of the US Women's National Team.

Perez-Selsky says that his group will actually produce more live hours here in Sydney than they did in Doha. Nearly 1.5-times, in fact. For some perspective, the FOX Sports Digital team produced a whopping 160 live shows exclusively for digital and social platforms at the men's FIFA World Cup in Doha last year.

Multiple digital-first programs, including the State of the Union Podcast with Alexi Lalas, are broadcasting from the Sydney set.

Those added hours are coming in the form of more live halftime streams, as well as longer bridge shows between matches. During the men's tournament, a post-match show might go 20 minutes followed by a dropout, before returning for a pre-match show 30 minutes or so later. During the Group Stage at the Women's World Cup, the plan has been to, instead, stay on the air all the way from stoppage time of a match into the first three minutes of the following match. That's approximately 45 minutes straight live.

The output is a testament to not simply the tireless effort of the FOX Sports Digital team but the seamless integration between the broadcast and the digital sides of the house.

FOX Soccer is truly one cross-platform family, says Michael Bucklin, SVP, Digital Content, FOX Sports. Whenever I say we' when referring to FOX Sports Digital, people like [Executive Producer of FIFA World Cup on FOX] David Neal or [President of Production & Operatons] Brad Zager are so quick to correct me. It's one big team.

Key Improvements to Tech Workflows In addition to the beautiful backdrop of Sydney Harbour and the Sydney Opera House at their set position - as well as a new LED wall at their disposal the FOX Sports Digital team is enjoying some significant improvements to its live workflows at this Women's World Cup.

Instead of breaking between post-match shows and pre-match shows, as FOX Sports Digital did during its coverage of the men's FIFA World Cup in Doha last year, live streams are, instead, staying live and bridging between matches. That puts shows live for anywhere between 45 minutes to a full hour.

Two huge improvements from the previous effort eight months ago in Doha come in the form of deeper integration with two key vendor partners: Tagboard and Reidel Communications.

Perez-Selsky says deeper use of Tagboard is not only streamlining graphical workflows, its making the on-air product more fresh and fun. All name fonts for every live stream are being run directly through Tagboard when at the men's World Cup, a designer would have to whip up an individual .png file for any font that appeared on screen. Going directly through Tagboard allows to make changes on the fly, quickly add in more spur of the moment on-screen fonts

We have a Tagboard producer actually in-country with us this time and that has made a big difference, says Perez-Selsky. They've basically become like a secondary producer on the show because we have so much social media integration to what we do. That's been a big improvement.

Spearheading the Tagboard efforts are Associate Tagboard Producer Trip Westmoreland, as well as Tagboard Specialists Alex Hobbs, Nicolette Rojo, and Cole Weinstein.

Secondly, going with Reidel Communications' popular Bolero product, comms on the set and, more importantly, with the FOX Sports Digital team's remote team in Los Angeles which is being headed up by Fox Sports' Senior Director, Digital Operations Rachel Sollenberger is greatly improved. Previously, all of that real-time comms was done via Slack and Zoom.

It just makes all of the difference, says Perez-Selsky. They're pulling late night shifts, obviously; starting their day at 1 a.m. and finishing it at 10 a.m. Having them on quick communication has been so great.

Another tech enhancement this year is going fully wireless on microphones and IFBs for on-air talent on the set.

Playing key roles in

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2023/08/02/live-from-fifa-womens-world-cup...
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