How Fox Sports Pulled Off Its Best Thanksgiving Weekend

Fox Sports has delivered its best Thanksgiving weekend ever, earning 165.3 million impressions across Fox and FS1 from 33 live events. The Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving, the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team versus England on Black Friday, No. 2 Michigan and No. 3 Ohio State squaring off on Saturday and the NFL window on Sunday pulled in 98 million viewers alone—a bigger audience than half of Fox Sports’ Super Bowl weekends. The network had been gearing up for a tentpole weekend for months—pretty much since it was determined that the USMNT would be playing England on the Friday after Thanksgiving as part of the 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup. “It’s always been our strategy to have the Michigan/Ohio State game. We alternate years of having the Dallas Thanksgiving game, and then we just got really lucky in having the USA/England match draw into Black Friday,” Mike Mulvihill, evp, head of strategy and analytics at Fox Sports, told Adweek. “Once that happened, we decided we wanted to try and go one step further and make it the biggest non-Super Bowl weekend we’ve ever had.” That resulted in Fox Sports convincing the NFL to award the network with the doubleheader on Sunday, which the company came away with. “It was really a combination of some pieces of strategy that went back to the original Big Ten deal, and just the pure luck of getting USA/England on the day that we did, and then try and capitalize on that and take advantage of this once in a career opportunity,” Mulvihill added. From a marketing perspective, Fox Sports knew it wouldn’t have to push hard to advertise the Cowboys vs. Giants on Thanksgiving, with Robert Gottlieb, president of marketing, describing it as a “given.” Still, the company kicked off its big weekend with its most-watched NFL regular season game on record. According to the network, 42.1 million viewers tuned in for the Cowboys and Giants' slugfest, which was well above viewership expectations. And with 42 million people tuning into football on Thursday, Fox Sports took full advantage in promoting fútbol. How Fox Sports Pulled Off a Massive World Cup Marketing Campaign “If [viewers] left that broadcast Thursday saying ‘holy smokes, enough, I know the USA is playing England, enough, and undefeated Ohio State and undefeated Michigan, I know.’ I’d rather they all leave annoyed and knowing exactly what those two events are than someone leaving that broadcast [without realizing],” Gottlieb said. The company expected the USMNT’s marquee match-up against England on Friday, Nov. 25, to be one of the most-watched soccer matches in U.S. history—and it was for the men’s side. The game brought in 15.5 million viewers, the most-watched men’s soccer telecast ever on English-language U.S. television. The previous record belonged to Brazil vs. Italy’s World Cup game back in 1994, when 14.5 million people tuned in. The most-watched match in U.S. history still belongs to the U.S. Women’s National Team, with the 2015 World Cup final against Japan clocking in at 25.4 million viewers. “It’s an important distinction,” Mulvihill said about men’s versus women’s soccer. “The U.S. women’s final in 2015 is not only No. 1 but No. 1 by a pretty decisive margin.” The momentum continued when Michigan and Ohio State squared off. Fox Sports saw 17.1 million viewers—the network’s most-watched regular season college football game ever. And on Sunday, the NFL window pulled in 23.3 million viewers for America’s Game of the Week, featuring the Los Angeles Rams versus the Kansas City Chiefs. How Brands Are Marketing Around the 2022 FIFA World Cup Keeping it old school Before the days of streaming, live sports could be counted to drive massive viewership across linear networks, and Thanksgiving weekend became a throwback to that model. “It’s an old-school broadcast TV model where you’re able to use one big event to promote the next,” Mulvihill said, pointing to the network’s usage of its NFL inventory to promote the World Cup, describing it as a “cascading effect.” “By the time we got to those Sunday NFL games, we knew how important the USA/Iran match would be,” he added, noting that following the Iran match, promotion shifted towards the USA vs. Netherlands match that took place on Saturday. “I don't know that broadcast television is doing the kind of day-in, day-out audiences to have that kind of promotional effect regularly these days, but we've been able to do it for the last two weeks, and it's kind of a throwback to an earlier era of broadcast TV,” Mulvihill said. Even though the U.S. has been knocked out of the World Cup, Fox Sports’ marketing campaign continues. The company pulled off its largest marketing campaign effort ever around this year’s World Cup, the first time the event has taken place outside of the summer months. Fox Sports is also gearing up for Super Bowl 57 in February and the 2023 Women’s FIFA World Cup in July and August.

Programming & Performance

How Fox Sports Pulled Off Its Best Thanksgiving Weekend in History

Four events brought in 98 million viewers—bigger than half the network's Super Bowls

Mollie Cahillane

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Mollie Cahillane