It will indeed be a Super Sunday for technologically challenged Hispanics who have had difficulty flipping the “SAP” button on and off when choosing between English-language or Spanish-language audio.
For the first time, live minute-by-minute coverage of the biggest one-day professional sporting event in North America — the National Football League’s crown-delivering Super Bowl XLVIII — will air both on Fox (in English) and on pay TV sibling Fox Deportes (in Spanish).
Fox expects a big payoff from televising the game on both networks. In addition to the millions of dollars in advertising set to air on Fox, Fox Deportes as of Jan. 17 had 19 confirmed Super Bowl sponsors, including Anheuser-Busch, Ford, General Motors, AT&T, Toyota, Viagra, Mars, Allstate and GoDaddy.com. In an interview with Multichannel News news editor Mike Reynolds, Fox Hispanic Media executive vice president of advertising sales Tom Maney noted that 20% of Fox Deportes’ Super Bowl inventory remained available roughly two weeks ahead of the big broadcast.
By comparison, Fox experienced strong advertiser demand and sold out all of its Super Bowl avails just one week after Thanksgiving, Fox Sports executive vice president Neil Mulcahy told The New York Times. However, Maney told MCN that Fox Deportes is ahead of forecast and didn’t have the luxury of selling Super Bowl slots during its 2013-14 upfront selling season.
Fox Deportes’ coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII starts Jan. 27 with special editions of its studio-based programs. The broadcast network’s Super Bowl Sunday coverage hits the airwaves at 10 a.m. ET — eight hours before kickoff—– with Football America: Our Stories, an hour-long NFL Flims-produced documentary that seeks to answer the question, “Why do we love football?” The 11 a.m. ET hour features a special edition of Fox Deportes’ popular studio-based sports news program Central Fox, with live hits from New York’s Times Square — across the Hudson River from the game venue at Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
A Super Bowl edition of Central Plus will air at noon ET, with Fox Deportes anchors Mauricio Cardenas and Roger Valdivieso joined by reporter Troy Santiago for late-breaking news and game analysis. A Gotham-themed episode of De Visitante, which examines key sites beyond game-day venues in cities across the globe, fills the 1 p.m. ET hour.
The second NFL Films-produced documentary of the day, Camino al Super Bowl, will air at 2 p.m. ET. The special offers a Week 1 to pre-game review of the 2013-14 NFL season, with players and coaches wired for sound. That’s followed by another hour-long edition of Central Fox, with anchors Cardenas and Valdivieso joined by the newest member of the Fox Deportes family — Brady Poppinga.
Poppinga, a 34-year-old native of Wyoming, spent six seasons as an outside linebacker for the Green Bay Packers before joining the St. Louis Rams for the 2011 season and the Dallas Cowboys for the 2012 season. Prior to a notable collegiate career at Brigham Young University, Poppinga spent two years in Uruguay as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where he became fluent in Spanish.
Poppinga’s bilingual fluency, combined with his experience as a member of the Super Bowl XLV champion Packers, has helped the brawny, sandy-haired athlete straight into an anchor’s chair for Super Bowl XLVIII. He’ll assist play-by-play announcer John Laguna and analyst Francisco X. Rivera in calling all of the action. The trio (pictured in studio) is joined by Rodrigo Arana on the sidelines and will helm a two-hour pregame show from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET, prior to an anticipated four hours of game coverage.
Once the champion is crowned, a half-hour postgame show will yield to a final 30-minute game-day edition of Central Plus, originating from both Times Square and Met Life Stadium.
Fox’s Super Bowl coverage will feature veteran play-by-play announcer Joe Buck and retired Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman with sideline reporters Pam Oliver and Erin Andrews.
Meanwhile, Fox is ensuring that its coverage of Super Bowl XLVII is accessible to all in the U.S., even if they don’t have a television nearby. The entire telecast of the big game will be made available via FoxSportsGo on the MSN/Fox Sports website, while iPad users can access the game via the FoxSportsGo App.
