Fox replaces ESPN's cult of British accents with maximum volume at World Cup

US viewers have a new broadcaster in charge for Russia 2018, and it looks like Fox is not afraid of a gimmick or eight

No one likes to be condescended to – unless you’re talking about the American soccer public. That, it appears, is the core of the strategy Fox Sports is applying to its World Cup coverage. This is, of course, virgin territory for Fox, the six previous World Cups having been beamed out to American households by ESPN. In 2011, when Fox won the bidding war to show the two tainted tournaments to come – Russia and Qatar, the blood money Cups – network executives committed to doing things differently. With the outline of Fox’s broadcast plans now clear, we can say they’ve succeeded – just not for the better. The new era is here, and if the early signs are accurate, it will mostly suck.

Fox and Telemundo together paid $1bn for the rights to show the 2018 and 2022 tournaments – more than double the amount forked out by the ESPN/Univision ticket for South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014. Failure by the US men’s team to qualify for Russia immediately made the network’s decision to put in such an aggressive bid look flawed. It’s perhaps to their credit that, even with interest in this tournament likely to be lower in the absence of the USMNT, the Fox execs haven’t retreated into a shell of self-pity. On the contrary, they’ve gone harder, deeper, further than anyone could have expected in the search for “hooks” to get the US public excited about a tournament from which the US itself will be absent. Sadly for them, the hooks are no good. If ESPN, in its slightly soft, Michael Ballack-friendly coverage of previous World Cups, tried to embody The Quiet European, Fox is going all out to be The Dumb American.

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