FOX updates FOX Sports App to include World Cup games

There’s good news and bad news about the updated FOX Sports App. The good news is that the app has added a lot of new functionality for sports fans. The bad news is that you won’t be able to watch World Cup games with the app unless you have a cable or satellite TV subscription.

In late 2017, FOX Sports announced that the FOX Soccer Match Pass app would stream the World Cup, but FOX Sports made a U-turn in February to remove the World Cup from its list of streaming rights.

Instead, FOX Sports has focused this year on integrating its soccer rights into the FOX Sports App combined with the other traditional American sports it has the rights to.

The updated FOX Sports App includes the following features for the World Cup:

• Stats,
• Highlights,
• A feature to make your own World Cup highlights,
• Bonus feeds,
• Plus live and on-demand World Cup games.

With the Bonus Feeds, FOX Sports offers five feeds (in addition to the main broadcast stream) for each of the 64 World Cup matches. The feeds will be: Team channels, match 360, tactical view, cable cam and highlights. The bonus feed delivers seven hours of additional coverage per match and 448 total additional hours of coverage over the length of the tournament.

More details about the five bonus feeds are as follows:

Team Channels – FOX Sports will produce a country-specific experience encompassing three live video feeds (match simulcast, player & coach/bench) as well as real-time, team-vs-team stats. All feeds are synced to provide concurrent views of the action from various angles of the pitch.

Match 360 (before & after the match) – A behind-the-scenes look two hours before each match kickoff that chronicles everything from team bus arrivals to warm-ups before the match

Tactical View (during the game) – Positioned high above one of the goals, this view shows all 22 players on the pitch and reveals the shape of the offense and defense of both nations; at the end of the match, coverage switches to on-field post-match interviews, followed by both team press conferences

Cable Cam – Suspended over the pitch, offers a unique view of the action

Highlights – Provides a constant loop of highlights and significant plays as they happen; shown from multiple angles, including super slo-motion replay.

While the new features are great, the fact is that many people have cut the cord and don’t have cable or satellite TV any longer, which makes the app practically useless to the more than 22 million Americans who don’t pay for television.

One alternative is to sign up for free trials to any of the legal streaming apps available that will be showing the World Cup and won’t require a cable or satellite subscription.

For example, with a free 7-day trial to fuboTV, you can watch all of the World Cup games from FOX and FS1. Plus, you can log into the FOX Sports App to watch the bonus feeds and all of the other content. Download the FOX Sports App from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, open it up and then use your fubo login/password when you go to Settings / TV provider sign-in / select fubo from the list.

These also include DIRECTV NOW, Sling TV and YouTube TV. Plus, all of those legal streaming services will allow you to log into the FOX Sports App so you can watch the games through there too (as well as through the legal streaming platforms themselves), so you get the best of both worlds.

In addition to the features already mentioned in the FOX Sports App, there’s also an option under “Video Settings” to allow you to show programming from FOX Deportes (as long as your cable/satellite or streaming package includes FOX Deportes). That’s certainly a hidden feature that many soccer fans will appreciate given the additional soccer coverage that FOX Deportes provides.