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There’s a new game in town.
Fox Sports 1, a new national sports network available in more than 90 million homes, will kick off this summer — just in time for the college football season.
The network, which will challenge ESPN’s supremacy, will feature college hoops and NASCAR in addition to NCAA football.
“Fans are ready for an alternative to the establishment, and our goal for [Fox Sports 1] is to provide the best in-game experience possible, complemented by informative news, entertaining studio shows and provocative original programming,” Eric Shanks, co-president of Fox Sports Media Group, said in a statement announcing the move.
Shanks will run Fox Sports 1 alongside co-president Randy Freer. They will be looking to grab a slice of the $13.3 billion spent annually on sport network TV and cable.
In a presentation to the media yesterday, David Hill, a senior executive vice president of News Corp., parent of Fox Sports and The Post, reminded the audience of Fox’s success in launching a new broadcast network, Fox, and a cable news channel, Fox News, in prior decades.
Fox Sports 1 will launch on Aug. 17 after taking over the Fox Speed slot on the dial.
Fox Speed currently receives 31 cents per month per home from distributors, according to SNL Kagan. Fox Sports 1 will get between 75 cents and $1, analysts predict.
Fox Sports brass declined comment on fees.
The Fox Sports sales team is currently trying to gauge what the market will bear in terms of pricing. The network is looking for long-term ad partners, given the longer length of sports rights contracts signed these days.
The sales team has the added leverage of selling the 2014 NFL Super Bowl, which Fox airs next year.
Fox and Fox Sports 1 are expected to work in tandem to create a week’s worth of pre-Super Bowl shows.
Toby Byrne, Fox president of ad sales, said, “The marketplace for sports seems insatiable,” although new sports offerings are proliferating with NFL Network now widely distributed, and CBS and NBC fielding their own cable sports entrants.
Fox Sports 1 won’t be short of live events, with Fox having spent the past two years buying up packages of cable and mobile rights. The network will also carry soccer and UFC — with Major League Baseball coming in 2014.
Fox Sports 1 is also looking to create appointment viewing with UFC programming on Wednesdays and a late-night sports show, “Fox Sports Live,” at 11 — which will go up against ESPN’s “Sports Center.”
Regis Philbin will host a 5 p.m. sports talk show called “Rush Hour.”
News Corp. President and COO Chase Carey said, “It’s going to take two to three years to become an alternative to ESPN.”
The idea of a sports network, he added, has been in gestation with varying degrees of seriousness for 15 years.