Fox Sports/Sporting News Partner Together

Fox Sports and Sporting News have announced an online partnership which will merge their digital efforts together. The three main websites which will be enhanced under this deal include FoxSports.com, SportingNews.com and Goal.com.

• Fox will now use Sporting News' ePlayer video service, which is widely syndicated across other various sports sites.
• The combined entity will be able to reach 65 million readers, which will definitely help enhance the premiums Fox is able to garner from advertisers.
• Editorial content from Fox can now appear on Sporting News' website and vice versa
• The partnership is exclusively digital which means that it's very unlikely you'll hear shoutouts to Sporting News during Fox Sports telecasts.
• With that being said, clips from Fox Sports telecasts will now be featured on Sporting News' website after they've been broadcast.
• Fox Sports and Sporting News will also work on joint web videos featuring personalities from both entities.

How does this help Fox Sports? Fox is able to enhance it's website with highlights which it didn't have the rights to before. There's no other video player online other than ESPN that has more rights to sports highlights than Sporting News' ePlayer (which has the ability to show highlights of up to 28 different sports leagues including the NBA, NHL and the NFL). Fox's original video content will also be distributed through the ePlayer which means that other sports sites which use the ePlayer will also have access to Fox's videos. It'll broaden Fox's reach even further.

How does this help Sporting News? Sporting News is able to add content to it's video player from the #2 cable sports network in town. They also have a partner that can drive traffic to their site through television. 

What does the future hold for this partnership? There's a lot of potential. It'll be intriguing to see how the partnership attempts to bring online readers to their site during big sporting events. From Adweek:

Fox Sports Digital svp Marla Newman said the new partnership will be particularly useful during major sporting events like the NCAA's March Madness, where both parties aren't the official rights holder. She hopes their larger combined audience will give marketers an alternative option to place their campaigns.

Although this partnership will not involve anything on the TV side of things, Sporting News and their new Team1Sports.com venture could be a useful tool which helps enhance Fox Sports 1's coverage of high school football and basketball.

Sporting News has ended it's partnership with AOL but according to Sports Business Daily, Fox's relationship with MSN will continue on a non-exclusive level, MSN.com/sports still links to Fox's website while AOL has moved on to ESPN for sports video content and the Associated Press and the Huffington Post for text:

Fox and MSN will continue to work together on some online traffic referral but on a much smaller and nonexclusive level.

Biggest winner? Sporting News' Goal.com could reap major benefits when Fox Sports airs the World Cup in a couple of years. They were already investing heavily in content during the World Cup which just passed and if Sporting News and Fox expand their relationship to include television promotion, maybe Goal.com gets a big boost during WC coverage and becomes the unofficial home for World Cup content just as ESPNFC.com was during the 2014 competition.

There are already remnants of the partnership on SportingNews.com. All of the external links which Sporting News is providing at the bottom of their news stories are linked to FoxSports.com.