FOX Sports Digital live-streams nearly 200 episodes of FOX Soccer Now to X and TikTok
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 América (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 América 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.
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 energy around that. It requires a little bit less work, thankfully, because you’re not having to re-create everything in VOD for that morning audience. You’re all in it together, and I think that energy translates.
How satisfying is it to see some of the big viewership numbers that your live programming is pulling in on platforms like X and TikTok?It’s incredibly gratifying. I think most of us who get into the content world do so to serve large audiences. When you see the large audiences responding well to what you’re doing, it makes you feel like you accomplished the mission.
These algorithms on social media are like the Coke formula: you kind of get it, but you don’t really understand exactly what’s going into it. There definitely seems to be some acceleration to it. If it accelerates early on, it tends to be more successful. You can almost immediately tell if a live show or a piece of VOD social content is going to work because it starts working right away. That can tell you if you’re on the right path or not. When you see the audience growing and growing, you get in the talent’s ear and say, “Keep going.”
We’ve talked about this at previous tournaments, but there’s a general conception in the industry that anything digital or social almost has to be more bare-bones and less polished than a traditional television show. Your team is taking advantage of an advanced studio and multiple control rooms on the FOX lot. Multicamera studio shows with graphics, instead of just being sent to television, are going to X or TikTok or Instagram. How cool is it to have the parent organization investing that kind of attention in digital products?It used to be, as you said, that, for something to be “digital,” it almost had to look raw. It had to feel raw. It had to be shot with a cellphone. It couldn’t have microphones on stage. I think everyone who is deep in this the way people who produce digital content are sees that the differences between digital and linear productions are becoming fewer and fewer.
Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union Podcast records and broadcasts live each game night of the Copa América and Euros from FOX Sports Digital’s studio space in Los Angeles.
A question to ask is “what is a podcast?” It used to be that a podcast was an audio-only product that had no ad breaks. Now podcasts have ad breaks and are consumed more as video than as audio. In fact, they’re consumed more as video social clips on platforms like TikTok than they are full-length or an audio-only edition. The bar has risen, and, thankfully, video is something that FOX Sports has always excelled at.
The trajectory of digital video is going in the direction of FOX’s strengths. When you think about how to make content that’s different for the digital space that is sort of in the classic mold of a podcast or a live podcast, it comes through in style more than in technology or quality. When you watch our linear broadcast, it feels like this championship-level production. Everyone looks professional. The set is immaculate, right? It’s just beautiful. That doesn’t mean that digital needs to be shot in a closet. It’s shot in an absolutely beautiful state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar digital facility. The difference is that, while Alexi Lalas is wearing a suit on the linear broadcast and speaking in a style that that audience is accustomed to, Jimmy Conrad is wearing a USA onesie on ours, Wes Morgan is wearing an eagle hat, and Melissa Ortiz is wearing a Team USA basketball jersey.
MORE: FOX Sports Vertical-Video Control Room Allows Euro, Copa América TikTok Studio Show Coverage To Shine
I think, deep down with audiences, there’s something nice about raw, a low-res video on social, but, in studio, we’d like to be able to see the game in high-definition when we’re showing highlights. We’d like to see our talent’s faces very clearly. We’d like to see graphics that are crisp. I think the quality of the production is only going up to a championship level just like linear.
There’s a lot of scale here. You are producing hundreds of hours between FOX Soccer Now and the Alexi Lalas podcast. The scale and consistency is your strength, but, when you zoom out, have there been any specific editions of these programs that make you think, “If I were to bottle up one episode and show it to everyone to say this is what we’re all about; this is us at our best,” what sticks out to you?Two stick out to me from [Copa América], but, when the USMNT plays, that is when we are at our best because we have a former Team USA member on our roster in Jimmy Conrad. We’re bringing in former international and U.S. international superstars like Mo Edu. We’re bringing in Stu Holden. Wes Morgan is a legend in Leicester City and played for Jamaica, but a lot of the U.S. audience is looking for his international perspective on the U.S. team.
Bucklin believes that his team is at their best when producing content around the matches of the U.S. Men’s National Team.
I think, when everyone buys into that and everyone is focused on that USA match — not in a way that’s stiff and stale; they’re okay showing their fandom — that’s fun. Our graphics team is having a good time with red, white, and blue when we introduce new elements. We have a hype button, and, every time Jimmy hits it, an intern dressed as an eagle carrying an American flag circles the set.
That’s all very different from TV because the viewer is different. Very few people watch TV on silent, but many people scroll social media silently. They’re at work. They’re on the bus. They’re on the subway. They’re in class. So it’s incredibly important that we’re appealing to a silent consumer and that a silent consumer is making a decision whether to turn the volume on. That’s a big way our shows differ from linear: it has to look engaging so that you want to turn the volume on. I think, when you see something like these talent dressed up smiling and laughing, they’re dancing, there’s an eagle running around set, and there are giant walls with giant moving graphics with fireworks exploding, you can’t help but wonder what’s going on. I think that is when we’re at our best.
I will also say that [host] Melissa Ortiz, who’s clearly an emerging star in the soccer space, has so much charisma, especially around every Colombia game. When Colombia wins, she makes the other talent get up and dance and listen to some Colombian music. Those are some of the best moments we have.
Your pregame shows have continued into the first five minutes of each game, and the postgame shows start with five minutes remaining in each game. What’s the strategy there?We tested that out with the World Series a couple of years ago. The gist of it was, basically, can we watch the top of the first inning together? A lot of viewers know that these major events are on, but they maybe don’t remember exactly what time they start. That’s just a reality. People are busy. This is the world to us, but, for the viewer, it’s entertainment, a release. We started it with the World Series; then we started doing it for the Women’s World Cup in Australia/New Zealand. Our goal is to help get the viewer aware of what we’re doing on social and reminding them about the game over on TV: this match is on, it is on right now, and this is how you watch it.
From a marketing perspective, that’s really interesting. It’s easy to allow people to sample your product. There might be a matchup on that the viewer historically didn’t know they’d be interested in. It’s just a reality. You might not have a rooting interest in either team, but, if you watch five minutes of it and see the quality of the play and see a great goal within the first five minutes, or you see a couple of almost-goals, you might be more interested in watching the rest of that match.
The more they care, the more likely they are to watch. The longer they watch, the more likely they are to watch more content (pregame and postgame), to read about it, to watch the highlights, to tell their friend about it, etc.
There’s a lot of reasons to provide that. I think the biggest hurdle is working with the leagues and the partners to show that value, but almost everyone that we’ve worked with and shown that value to has wanted to do more of it.
These are fun shows, but it’s long days. It’s a lot of work. What can you say about the people working with you behind the scenes?The folks that work in that studio are truly working around the clock for 40-odd days. Those are very early call times. Those are late release times. There’s a lot of prep, and that only got more complicated when we added the vertical control room. The people that run that studio are just incredible, not just in the quality of the product but in the way that they do it every single morning, noon, and night.
There’s a group at FOX Sports Digital called “Screening.” They are watching every second of content, whether it’s on FOX, FS1, social media, streaming on the website, the app, you name it. They’re taking the best of those moments. They’re watching every single linear live match. They’re watching every linear and digital pregame, they’re watching every podcast, and they’re taking the best out of every single one of those video programs and bringing it to the website, the app, and every social-media platform we have.
I give a huge shout out to them. We have a staff of editorial that has three writers in the field covering every single piece of news. Every feature is translated. Every single digital show, linear show, and live event is turned into written format so that people who prefer to read and are not in a position to watch consume it. We even have a group of people working on Tagboard to identify every social reaction on the internet.
We get up for these large events; it almost feels like you’re going to summer camp. You’re basically there for 40 straight days. You commit to it. You’re going to get tired. Those people [in the Screening group] are carrying the load for us and are the reason we’re so successful.
FOX Sports Digital ‘Summer of Soccer’ Crew List
ProductionFran Arthur, Sean Sullivan, Matt Modica, Justin Graver, Katherine Khordaji, Kiara Santana, Kyla Morris, Raya Clay, Ryan Bartlett, Taylor Gelbrich, Trip Westmoreland, Tyler Wojicak, Jack Hallinan
SocialAlex Calvert, Polly Marino, Brandon Blueford, Joe Scarpone, Lisa Redmond, Logan Bradley, Maddie McCarron, Mitchie Myers, Alea Beaman, Zack Crutcher, Tristin Clint, Cole Weinstein, Day Gonzales
Tech OperationsJohn Marcus, Chris Cheshire, Carla Gutierrez, Erin Schechter, Gabe Gross-Sable, John Marcus, Jon Hill, Josh Boro, Kevin Palys, Thomas Meason, Ariel Tamir-Pinsky
DesignAbby Treece, Carly Sarno, Danny Devito, Matthew Risinger, Lucas Durand, Meech Robinson
ScreeningJack Coakley, Torin Westfall, Kara Nosrati, Trey White, Allison Luthman, Andrew Marini, Antonio Rojas, Jack Srinivasan, Emilia Green, Theodore Fernandez
PostproductionDavid Cox, Atheng Tejano, Amanda Herman, Fernando Cardoso, Marty Colassuono
EditorialOr Moyal, Adam Maya, Austin Green, Bob Harkins, Brantley Watson, Vikram Sairam, Christian Rivas, Chris Lopez, David Albiani, Ed de la Fuente, Ed McGregor, Erica Davis, Jonathan Raber, Jordan Dollenger, Sara Wagenveld, Sean Merriman, Simon Gibbs, Vikas Chokshi
Content OperationsAmanda Salazar, James Dimeo, Connor Kiesel, Clarissa Hernandez, Joey Paolino
FOX Sports Digital Senior StaffMichael Bucklin, Nick Rago, Ricardo Perez-Selsky, Rachel Sollenberger, Sei Furutani, Jonathan Berger
