SVG Sit-Down: FOX Sports' Michael Bucklin Explores Successful Live Social Video During Euros, Copa Amrica

SVG Sit-Down: FOX Sports' Michael Bucklin Explores Successful Live Social Video During Euros, Copa Am rica FOX Sports Digital live-streams nearly 200 episodes of FOX Soccer Now to X and TikTok By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Friday, July 12, 2024 - 1:17 pm

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FOX Sports' epic Summer of Stars comes to a dramatic conclusion on Sunday with the finals for both the UEFA European Championship (3 p.m. ET, FOX) and the CONMEBOL Copa Am rica (8 p.m. ET, FOX) set. For the digital production team in particular, it will cap off an insane month of live- and social-content creation that has generated a ton of traffic and interest in both tournaments from the @FOXSoccer accounts across TikTok, X, Instagram, and Facebook.

From left: Hosts Jimmy Conrad, Melissa Ortiz, and Wes Morgan have been linchpins to the live pre/postmatch show FOX Soccer Now across X and TikTok for both Copa Am rica and the Euros. (All photos: FOX Sports)

As the group has done for its coverage of other recent major international soccer tournaments - the 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup in Qatar, the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia/New Zealand - FOX Sports Digital has leaned heavily into live studio and podcast programming for social platforms while providing a high level of production value.

The pre/postmatch program Fox Soccer Now and the popular podcast series Alexi Lalas' State of the Union Podcast broadcast live from studios on the FOX lot in Los Angeles and are produced with high-end graphics and full-resolution highlights, anything one would expect from a top-flight linear-television production. The team has even dedicated a second control room to producing live programming for TikTok for distribution in a vertical 9:16 format.

In all, it has totaled 191 shows - hundreds of hours of live content - distributed exclusively to social platforms. And it has paid off in spades. Through July 3, according to FOX Sports, Digital had generated 440 million views across the social-media accounts of FOX Soccer, Alexi Lalas' State of the Union Podcast, and the sports-betting-focused account BEAR BETS. Through the midway point of both tournaments (July 1), FOX Soccer social-media channels had picked up more than 430,000 new followers across all platforms.

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Before the Summer of Soccer ends, SVG sat down with Michael Bucklin, SVP, digital, FOX Sports, to reflect on the work being done, get his take on why his team is committed to live social on such a grand scale, what he and his team continue to learn at each of these major soccer tournaments, and how it is all leading to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America.

FOX Sports Digital has carved a cool lane for itself. I don't think anyone covering a property does more comprehensive, exclusively live social content in the U.S. than you guys do around international soccer tournaments. What has it been like watching that evolve, and how has this become an expectation that you guys will produce this much live content exclusively for social platforms?

One of the things we think about is, whatever you do today becomes the foundation of what you do tomorrow. So, when we're trying something today, we're not worried just about [whether] this is going to be a success for this pregame or postgame show for that particular event on television. We're thinking, how might we use this come the World Series? How might we think about this for the fall for college football or the NFL? How might this be useful for the Super Bowl this coming February on FOX? How might we think about using what works today for the Gold Cup or the Women's Euros next summer? And, of course, everything we do aims at how might we put it to use for the [FIFA Men's] World Cup in 2026?

FOX Sports' Michael Bucklin: The differences between digital and linear productions are becoming fewer and fewer.

To me, when you think about it that way, you're not just putting this enormous pressure on yourself to have a killer broadcast for today; you're giving yourself the freedom to try some things and to fail at some things with the belief that whatever we do today will be better, of higher quality, more efficient tomorrow. That's just the mindset.

In some cases, when you're trying something super-new, innovative, and different, the audience is okay if you make a tiny little mistake here and there. At least we'd like to think so. Maybe we've convinced ourselves as much. But we just don't feel that pressure to be a 100% perfect. We feel more pressure to be building the foundation for what we're going to be doing in the future while serving fans today.

You've got two massive tournaments filling your broadcast day. Fans are almost getting two World Cups for the price of one: Euros during the day, Copa at night. The time zones are working in your favor, so much better for you than when you were doing similar things in Russia, Australia, and Qatar. How important is it that the schedule is working out in your favor?

It's enormous. We've produced tournaments in Eastern Europe and Australia. There have been lots of times when you're thinking not just about the product that you're creating in real time but about how well that product will be repurposed in the morning when people [in the U.S.] wake up. You're thinking about multiple things at the same time. Your editors are thinking about how to re-edit the content so that the morning audience can consume it and it's still relevant to them.

When you're doing things that are truly live, there's an energy because you see the traffic, you see the comments, you see the excitement that people have. You see the concurrent viewership grow, and you're speaking to that audience in that moment. I think there's an en

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/07/12/svg-sit-down-fox-sports-michael...
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