Fifteen years of Fox Sports: Football on top

Roar Guru

5th April, 2011

3022 Reads

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Moonface

Roar Guru

5th April, 2011

3022 Reads

I was a little surprised to read that Fox Sports is celebrating their fifteenth anniversary in Australia. Yes, Fox Sports on Australian Pay Television turns fifteen this month.

Is it really fifteen years? Seems like only a few years ago that Fox Sports first kicked off in Australia, or maybe time moves faster for sports fans.

We have always been interested in a lot of sports, having grown up in Melbourne.

But I must confess we only bought Foxtel the year when the A-League started and the Socceroos games were only shown on Fox.

What a sports education since then – Ultimate Fighting Championship, Curling, Bikini Beach, American Football and the Lingerie Football League, Baseball, Surfing, Monster Trucks, Super Rugby, The Ultimate Fighter, all forms of Motor Racing, a 24 hour Fox Sports News channel and the list goes on.

I now know what Digby Ioane does and who he plays for.

The other interesting thing about the fifteenth anniversary is a list of the fifteen most watched Foxtel Pay TV sports programs in those years.

Here’s the results:

1. World Cup Qualifier – Australia v Uzbekistan 1/4/2009: 431,000
2. AFC Asian Cup Qualifier: Japan v Australia #3 21/7/2009: 419,000
3. Chappell-Hadlee Trophy – New Zealand v Australia 18/2/2007: 415,000
4. Parramatta Eels v North Queensland Cowboys 02/04/2011: 407,000
5. World Cup Qualifier – Australia v Japan 17/6/2009: 378,000
6. Canterbury Bulldogs v Wests Tigers 14/3/2011: 365,000
7. Parramatta Eels v Sydney Roosters 31/7/2007: 361,000
8. South Africa v Australia – Second Test, Day 2 7/3/2009: 358,000
9. Canterbury Bulldogs v Melbourne Storm 23/5/2009: 357,000
10. South Africa v Australia – Second Test, Day 1 6/3/2009: 355,000
11. South Africa v Australia – Second Test, Day 4 9/3/2009: 353,000
12. Bledisloe Cup – Australia v New Zealand 26/7/2008: 350,000
13. South Africa v Australia – Second Test, Day 3 8/3/2009: 350,000
14. AFC Asian Cup – Australia v Oman 8/7/2007: 345,000
15. World Cup Qualifier – Australia v Qatar 1/4/2009: 345,000

Firstly, the most popular sporting team on Fox Sports in the last fifteen years has been the Socceroos. Not only do they make up the top two, but also have five of their matches in the Foxtel top fifteen.

And who would have thought it would have been Uzbekistan at number one?

Next is Cricket at number three with the Chappell-Hadlee trophy match against New Zealand. Again a surprise for me having New Zealand as our most watched cricket opponent. Cricket also has five of the top matches featured in the list.

Next most popular was Rugby League at number four and four of the top fifteen on the list were rugby league games – all NRL season games and Parramatta and Canterbury featuring most prominently.

The only other sport to make it was Rugby Union at number 12 with the Bledisloe Cup match of July 2008 against the best rugby nation in the world – New Zealand.

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