Fox Sports and Twitter team up for Women's World Cup

Brief:

Fox Sports and Twitter are working together to bring more soccer to the social network for the 2019 Women's World Cup in France this summer. Fox will stream "FIFA Women's World Cup Now" live to U.S. Twitter users when 24 teams face off from June 7 to July 7, Adweek reported.
Fox promises to immediately update its @FoxSports and @FoxSoccer accounts on Twitter with news about every goal scored during the soccer tournament. The accounts will show U.S. Women's National Team player countdowns, key moments and features that combine international athletes and Fox Sports personalities.
Before the Women's World Cup, Fox Sports and Twitter will show highlights from the SheBelieves Cup tournament from Feb. 27 to March 5 in the U.S. The invitational will feature the national women's teams from Brazil, England, Japan and the U.S.

Insight:

This year's Women's World Cup may have a chance to gain stronger U.S. TV ratings than last year's World Cup, which didn't include the U.S. men's team, sources suggest. The absence of an American team led to a 42% decline in TV ratings for the soccer tournament, the Associated Press reported. While women's sports tend to get smaller audiences than men's, more than 750 million TV viewers worldwide watched the Women's World Cup Canada in 2015 as broadcast coverage increased 31% from the prior tournament in Germany four years earlier, according to FIFA and KantarSport.

Those trends bode well for Twitter and Fox Sports, which last year worked together on the "FIFA World Cup Now" show hosted by Rachel Bonnetta. The show netted 7.1 million views during the tournament in Russia, according to a Twitter blog post. Twitter also racked up 115 billion impressions through tweets during the World Cup as fans gathered to react to goals or discuss key match action.

Budweiser, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple were the most frequently mentioned brands on Twitter during last year's World Cup, per Twitter's blog. The most tweeted match was the final between France and Croatia. The U.S. women's team won the last World Cup in 2015 and was the runner-up to Japan in 2011. With the team's success and sizeable following, an appearance by the U.S. women's team in this year's final could become the most tweeted match, gaining major reach for host network Fox.

Twitter has boosted its soccer programming in the past few years to boost global engagement. The social network recently partnered with England's Football Association on a direct message (DM) bot that sends video highlights to overseas soccer fans starting with the third round of the Emirates FA Cup. Twitter will release as many as four highlights for each half of live tournament games until the final match on May 18. In addition, the company last year signed a three-year deal to stream Major League Soccer matches that broadcast on Univision networks.