On Wednesday morning, FIFA tweeted the 2022 World Cup match schedule, complete with start times. Even the most casual football fan is aware that the next edition of the World Cup will take place in Qatar, and will take place in the winter (well, late fall to be precise) rather than the summer.
? 2022 MATCH TIME #WORLDCUP?
? Does it all start in Qatar on Monday November 21, 2022?
? ️? https://t.co/tIvYvRoy5j pic.twitter.com/yQvgGczszK
– FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) July 15, 2020
At its launch, FIFA further expanded the schedule. During the first 12 days of the tournament, there will be four group stage matches each day. There would be no days off between the end of the group stage at the start of the Round of 16, which would include two games per day for four days. After a couple of days of rest, two quarterfinals would take place two days before two more days of rest, a semi-final on consecutive days, two more days off, the third-place game and the final on December 18.
And then … there are the start times. Group stage matches will start at 1:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. local time, while Round of 16 and the quarterfinals will start at 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. local. The semifinals start at 10:00 p.m., and both the third-place and final game start at 6:00 p.m. None of that seems too crazy, until you take into account the time change.
Qatar is eight hours ahead of the east coast of the United States and 11 hours ahead of the west coast. Those kickoffs at 1:00 PM will air at 5:00 AM in New York and 2:00 AM in Los Angeles. The kickoffs at 16:00 will be issued at 8 AM in Philadelphia and at 5 AM in Seattle. The kick-off at 6:00 p.m. will be issued at 10 a.m. in Miami and 7 a.m. in San Francisco, while the kick-off at 7:00 p.m. will begin at 11 a.m. on the east coast and 8 a.m. on the west coast. Finally, we have the kickoffs at 22:00, which will start at 2 PM in Atlanta and 11 AM in Las Vegas.
That means the eastern mountains will have to wake up before the sun rises for eight games, and the western mountains will have to get up early (or stay up late) for eight and eight others. The remaining 32 matches of the group stage, along with the rest of the tournament, will sometimes air that European football fans are most used to.
Two summers ago in Russia, there were some weather issues, but nothing like this. Only one game started before 8 AM on the East Coast, and nine started at 8 AM sharp. In 2022, that amount will almost double.
And now that the tournament is taking place in November and December, instead of June and July, Fox Sports will have potential streaming conflicts with its revenue stream, the NFL (and college football to a lesser extent, at least on a Saturday. ). The 2022 World Cup will take place on four Sundays, but fortunately one of them is a day off. On the first Sunday of the tournament, the last two kickoffs are 11 am and 2 pm on the East Coast, right in the heart of Fox’s Sunday coverage in the NFL. They are likely to deviate to FS1. The second Sunday of the tournament features a couple of Round of 16 games, which start at 10 am and 2 pm, respectively. They will probably also be beaten to FS1.
But after Sunday’s break, we come to the last Sunday of the tournament which is … the World Cup Final, which starts at 10am on the east coast. There is absolutely no way that Fox can realistically broadcast the * World Cup Final * on cable and cannot be punished across the board. If Fox airs the game on stream, it will definitely eat up the Fox NFL start, and if the game runs into extra overtime, it could start hitting Fox NFL on Sunday. That would generate some complaints from soccer fans, but those complaints would pale in comparison to the contempt Fox would receive when moving the Final to FS1.
Two years ago, FS1 matches were plentiful in the group stage, but not so much after that: only two knockout matches (the France-Uruguay and Brazil-Belgium quarterfinals, both broadcast on Friday, July 6) were not broadcast on television.
A possible solution to Fox’s possible programming headache might be similar to what CBS did this fall. After the Masters was postponed to November, CBS was considering over-scheduling around week 10 of the 2020 NFL season. Instead of games overlapping with the final round of Masters coverage, CBS has all of its NFL Week 10 games in the last window. Theoretically, Fox could do something similar with the first and second Sunday of the World Cup, using soccer to lead soccer instead of scheduling the NFL broadcast against the World Cup by cable.
There’s also the little problem of Thanksgiving Day (which will be November 24, 2022, the fourth day of the group stage). But since the last game starts at 2 p.m., Fox could choose to avoid a pre-game show before the start of the afternoon if he wanted to broadcast the World Cup by broadcast rather than by cable.
Much of Fox’s plans will likely have to do with whether or not the United States really qualifies for Qatar 2022 (which is far from certain). It’s hard to say that the USMNT’s humiliating failure to qualify for Russia 2018 did not impact Fox’s plans for that tournament, which included two-thirds of the network’s party broadcasters who called the monitors games in LA.
Fox’s soccer coverage is in a precarious position in Qatar 2022. The lonely league, after the Bundesliga’s departure to ESPN +, the network has rights is Major League Soccer, whose agreement reportedly ends after the 2022 season. If MLS does not compete with Fox again, we are facing a situation in which the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico will be broadcast on a network that only it has snippets from the rest of the soccer world (various Concacaf events and US soccer games). And if we get to that point in two years, and Fox knows he won’t have much soccer coverage outside of major FIFA tournaments, why wouldn’t they prioritize the NFL?
The winter World Cup is a shitty situation for almost all parties involved, but the addition of inconvenient game times is leading to a situation where Fox will split between the NFL and the first soccer tournament. If it were any other country, it wouldn’t be a big decision, but in the American sports world, the NFL is king.
