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Fox Sports is the programming division of the Fox Broadcasting Company, owned by 21st Century Fox, that is responsible for sports broadcasts on the network, and its dedicated regional and national sports cable channels. The flagship entity of 21st Century Fox's Fox Sports Media Group division, it was formed in 1994 with Fox's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football League (NFL) games. In subsequent years, it has televised the National Hockey League (1994–1999), Major League Baseball (1996–present), NASCAR (2001–present), Bowl Championship Series (2007–2010), the USGA Championships (2015–present), and the (FIFA World Cup ) (starting in 2018). ==History== When the Fox Broadcasting Company launched in October 1986, the network's management, having seen how sports programming (in particular, soccer events) played a critical role in the growth of the British satellite service BSkyB, determined that sports would be the type of programming that would ascend Fox to a major network status the quickest; as a result, Fox tried to attract a professional football package to the network. In 1987, after ABC initially hedged on renewing its contract with the National Football League (NFL) for the television rights to ''Monday Night Football'', Fox made an offer for the package at the same price that ABC had been paying at the time – about $13 million per game. However, partly due to the fact that Fox had yet to establish itself as a major network, the NFL decided to resume negotiations with ABC, with the two parties eventually agreeing to a new contract, keeping what was the crown jewel of the league's television broadcasts on that network (where it remained until 2006, when ''MNF'' moved to sister network ESPN as part of a contract that also saw NBC gain the ''Sunday Night Football'' package). Six years later, as the league's television contracts for both the National Football Conference and American Football Conference divisions, and for the Sunday and Monday primetime football packages were up for renewal, Fox placed a bid for $1.58 billion to obtain the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference. On December 17, 1993, the NFL selected Fox's bid and signed a four-year contract with the network to award it the rights to televise regular season and playoff (as well as select preseason) games from the NFC, beginning with the 1994 season; the initial contract also included the exclusive U.S. television rights to broadcast Super Bowl XXXI in 1997. The deal stripped CBS of football telecasts for the first time since 1955. Fox also lured commentators Pat Summerall, John Madden, Dick Stockton, Matt Millen, James Brown and Terry Bradshaw as well as many behind-the-scenes production personnel from CBS Sports to staff the network's NFL coverage. In order to bolster viewership for the NFL telecasts, Fox parent News Corporation (which would spin-off Fox and most of its other television properties, except for those based in Australia, to 21st Century Fox in July 2013) decided to strike affiliation deals with broadcasting companies that owned stations affiliated with ABC, NBC and CBS in order to raise the profile of Fox's affiliate body, which at the time mainly consisted of UHF stations that (with some exceptions) had little to no prior history as a major network affiliate, had weaker signals and largely did not carry as much value with advertisers as the Big Three's affiliates. During the late spring and summer of 1994, Fox reached separate agreements with New World Communications (a media company controlled by investor Ronald Perelman, which Fox's station group Fox Television Stations would purchase in July 1996) and SF Broadcasting (a joint venture between Fox and Savoy Pictures that purchased four stations from Burnham Broadcasting through separate deals in July and August 1994) to switch a total of sixteen stations to Fox between September 1994 and September 1996 as affiliation contracts with those stations' existing network partners expired. The NFL television rights and affiliation deals firmly established Fox as the nation's fourth major network. The network's relationship with the NFL would expand in 1997, when it began airing games from NFL Europe, an agreement which ended when the European league folded in 2005. With a sports division now established, Fox decided to seek broadcast rights agreements with other major sports leagues. On September 9, 1994, Fox was awarded the broadcast television rights to the National Hockey League in a $155 million bid (amounting to $31 million annually); as a result, it became the first broadcast network to be awarded a national television contract to carry NHL games, which longtime NHL Commissioner John Ziegler had long thought to be unattainable (NHL games had not aired regularly on a national broadcast network – outside of select championship and All-Star games, and time buy basis airings of ESPN telecasts on ABC from 1992 to 1994 – since NBC's telecast of the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals, as networks were not willing to commit to broadcasting a large number of games due to low viewership). Again, Fox outbid CBS, which wanted to secure the rights as a result of losing the NFL to Fox, for the NHL package. Fox lost the NHL rights to ABC Sports and ESPN in 1999. On November 7, 1995, Fox was awarded partial broadcast rights to Major League Baseball games, in a shared deal with NBC (which had carried the league's telecasts since 1947). Through the deal, which Fox paid a fraction of the amount ($115 million) that CBS paid to obtain the rights effective with the 1990 season, Fox would broadcast approximately 16 regular season Saturday afternoon games per season (unlike the previous Baseball Network deal between NBC and CBS) and offered different game broadcasts shown on a regionalized basis (usually up to three per week). As part of a six-year renewal of this deal – valued at $2.5 billion – in September 2000, Fox Sports became the exclusive over-the-air broadcaster of Major League Baseball, giving it the exclusive rights to the World Series beginning with the 2000 edition, as well as rights to the All-Star Game, select Division Series games and exclusive coverage of the League Championship Series. Under a clause in the contract (which has not been exercised as there has not been a labor dispute during the term of rights while Fox Sports has held the contract), if some of the scheduled games were cancelled by a strike or lockout, Fox would still pay Major League Baseball for a full slate of annual games, while the league in turn had to compensate Fox with additional telecasts. In 1998, Fox obtained the broadcast rights to the Cotton Bowl Classic college football game; the game aired on Fox until 2014, with ESPN assuming the rights beginning with the 2015 game, adding it the five other bowl games comprising the College Football Playoff system that ESPN already broadcast, under a twelve-year deal worth over $7.3 billion. On November 11, 1999, NASCAR awarded Fox and sister cable channel FX the partial television rights to its races (as part of a four-network deal, valued at $2.4 billion, that also included NBC and TBS; the latter's rights were later assumed by TNT) starting with the 2001 season, with Fox and FX alternating coverage of all races held during the first half of the season (NBC and TNT would air all races held during the second half). The deal also included alternating coverage of the preeminent Daytona 500 race, with Fox televising it in odd-numbered years and NBC airing it in even-numbered years through 2006, with the opposing network airing the Pepsi 400 instead. The rights later extended to sister motorsports-oriented cable network Speed Channel in October 2002, when it bought out ESPN's contract to televise the Camping World Truck Series races. Through a 2006 contract renewal, Fox became the exclusive U.S. broadcaster of the Daytona 500. In partnership with Speed, Fox has also broadcast the start of the Rolex 24 at Daytona and select Formula One races produced by Speed beginning in 2007, and also carries two Camping World Truck Series races per season that were transferred from Speed, and are produced under the Fox NASCAR brand. In 2007, Fox began airing most of the games that were part of the Bowl Championship Series, including the BCS Championship Game (although due to a separate arrangement between ABC and the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, events in the series that were held at the Rose Bowl stadium – such as the Rose Bowl Game and the 2010 BCS Championship – were excluded from the contract), in a deal worth close to $20 million per game. ESPN assumed the BCS rights beginning in 2010. In 2011, Fox began to increase its college football output through the introduction of a Saturday "game of the week" on FX, featuring games from the Pac-12, the Big 12 and Conference USA (the rights to which were later assumed by Fox and Fox Sports 1); Fox also signed deals to carry two new championship games created through conference realignments that occurred in 2010 and 2011: the Big Ten Conference Championship through 2016 (as part of Fox Sports' involvement with the Big Ten Network), and the Pac-12 Championship through 2017 on an alternating basis with ESPN. In May 2010, Fox aired the final of the UEFA Champions League, marking the network's first ever soccer broadcast. In August 2011, Fox Sports announced it had reached a seven-year broadcast agreement with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, ending the mixed martial arts promotion's relationship with Spike. The deal included the rights to broadcast four live events in prime time or late night annually, as well as other UFC programming that would air on various Fox properties, including the Fox network (which aired its first UFC match in November 2011, the first time that the UFC aired an event on broadcast television), FX and Fuel TV. Fox previously carried events from UFC competitor International Fight League in 2007 on its sister network-turned-programming service MyNetworkTV under a time-buy arrangement until that organization was purchased by UFC; however, no MyNetworkTV involvement was announced under the current UFC agreement (by that point, the programming service had eliminated first-run programming to focus on off-network reruns of drama series). On August 6, 2013, Fox Sports announced a 12-year deal to broadcast the three major open championships of the United States Golf Association, including the U.S. Open, beginning in 2015. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fox Sports (United States)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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