FOX Sports has announced that it has acquired the Spanish-language and English-language rights to Club Tijuana home games in Liga MX and Copa MX. Both FOX Sports and FOX Deportes will begin broadcasting games featuring Xolos starting this summer.
The announcement represents a huge milestone for Liga MX as it’s the first time that FOX Sports has dipped its toe in the water to bring Liga MX to English-language viewers in the United States. Previously, ESPN televised Liga MX games in English several years ago.
Club Tijuana, commonly referred to as Xolos, typically schedule their home games on Friday nights, so the timing of their games will fit in well with FOX Sports’ weekend schedule and won’t interfere with MLS.
The timing of FOX Sports acquiring the rights to Xolos home games is optimal given that the broadcaster recently lost the rights to the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League.
Prior to acquiring the English- and Spanish-language rights to Xolos home games, Univision Deportes held the rights to the popular Liga MX club. Club Tijuana is so popular in southern California that many American soccer fans travel south of the border to adopt Xolos as their local team.
FOX’s coverage of Club Tijuana games will begin after this summer’s World Cup. The Liga MX Apertura typically begins in late July or early August.
Will they actually put games on FS1 or FS2?
Good point but for all the talk of how popular Liga MX it’s mainly a cultural thing as proof where English language games averaged only 50-60k on ESPN from 2012-2015. The strong cultural affinity of Mexican-Americans for Liga MX will eventually wain over time as has already been evident with some of the younger 2nd and 3rd generation of fans starting to follow others leagues. Liga MX ratings are basically half of what they were 10-12 yrs ago. Hopefully this goes better than Liga MX last foray but I agree with Christopher this is probably just filler programming for to make up some of losing tv rights to losing Champions League.
Filler programming to make up for losing rights to Champions League.
What else does fox sports gets of soccer?
This makes perfect sense, as far as expanding Liga MX coverage in English here in the US, MLS have their matches shown in Spanish, so why not have Liga MX clubs show their home matches in English, right?
More soccer games on TV in English? Yes please and thank you.