Fox Sports 2
Fox Sports 2 is an American sports-oriented pay television channel owned by the Fox Sports Media Group, a unit of Fox Corporation. The channel is based at the Fox Sports division's headquarters on the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City section of Los Angeles, California.
The network was founded as Fuel TV on July 1, 2003, focusing on the culture of extreme sports, including skateboarding, snowboarding, wakeboarding, motocross, surfing, BMX and FMX. The network's prominence expanded further with the introduction of UFC mixed martial arts programming to its lineup in 2012 as part of a wider deal with Fox Sports. On August 17, 2013, Fuel TV was rebranded as Fox Sports 2, refocusing primarily as an overflow channel for the newly launched mainstream sports network Fox Sports 1. The relaunch of Fuel TV as FS1's sister network received little advanced promotion.
As of September 2018, approximately 57.5 million households received Fox Sports 2. By June 2023, this number has dropped to 52.6 million households.
History
As Fuel TV
The network's concept originated in several extreme sports programming concepts. One of them originated from Alistair Gosling, founder of the Extreme Sports Channel and Extreme Sports TV distribution and production company . The concept, taken by Gosling to David Sternberg of Fox Sports Net, focused on expanding the coverage of extreme sports. This was translated into growing the existing programming block on the regional sports networks Fox Sports Net airing in the early evenings during the early 2000s on the network's affiliates, which included Blue Torch TV and EX TV, and combining it with brokered arrangements for individual shows which included among others New Waves Surf Television and 16MM, along with ideas from the Europe-based Extreme Sports Chanternberg, CJ Olivares and Lloyd Bryan Adams.Originally, the name FUEL TV was conceived and launched as a regional weekly TV show that was also focused on extreme sports and indie music by Chris Braly, founder and president of BIG Studios production company. That series debuted on broadcast television on September 8, 2001, on WB affiliate WFLI-TV in Chattanooga, Tennessee, airing on Saturday evenings at midnight. After nearly 100 episodes, News Corporation and CJ Oliveras took notice and eventually negotiated a buyout of the concept and trademark from Braly in late 2003. This weekly episodic version of Fuel TV aired its final episode in September of that year just as FOX was launching their Fuel TV cable and satellite network.
The Fuel TV cable and satellite channel featured programs ranging from original series, exclusive events, licensed films and creative interstitials. Extreme sports programming was formerly the bulk of the network, with a diverse combination of sports, music, reality programming, extreme sports news and other content, including comedic programs.
Beginning in late 2011, Fuel became the official cable home of the Ultimate Fighting Championship as part of a broader agreement between Fox and the mixed martial arts promotion, featuring pre-match and analysis programming involving the circuit such as the weekly UFC Tonight, along with undercard fights for UFC pay-per-view events. By the second half of 2012, Fuel TV's lineup consisted solely of combat sports and reruns of reality programs from sister channel Speed.
With the 2012–13 Premier League season, extra live and recorded Premier League matches were carried on Fuel TV, giving Fox Soccer three channels to carry live matches on Premier League match days; this began in May 2012 with Fuel carrying one of nine games on the final day of the Premier League season as part of Fox Sports's "Survival Sunday" effort to air all that day's Premier League matches across the division's cable properties. In March 2013, Fuel TV began airing coverage of the Rugby Football League Super League and Championship.
Relaunch as Fox Sports 2
In January 2013, alongside reports that Speed was to be replaced by a national sports network known as Fox Sports 1, it was reported that Fox was planning to rebrand Fuel TV as Fox Sports 2, a name which Fox had filed a trademark application for on November 27, 2012.As opposed to the widely publicized launch of Fox Sports 1, the impending replacement of Fuel TV with Fox Sports 2 was met with relatively little fanfare, and was only announced roughly one week prior. The relaunch of the channel as Fox Sports 2 took place on August 17, 2013, at the same time that Speed was replaced by Fox Sports 1. Upon the relaunch, the channel was expanded into a mainstream sports service with a wider variety of content, although combat sports remained an integral part of the lineup. Fuel's signature UFC program, UFC Tonight, moved over to Fox Sports 1 with the launch.
The network's two highest-rated telecasts came from UFC events temporarily airing on FS2 due to overruns on FS1. The first bout of the UFC 200 preliminary card drew an average of 582,000 viewers, a network high. The first main card bout of UFC Fight Night: Swanson vs. Lobov also aired on FS2 in April 2017, drawing an average of 430,000 viewers. After the move of the rights for the UFC to ESPN and ESPN+ in 2019, its schedule has become more varied, and is less tied to a certain sport than in the past.
Programming
Fox Sports 2 features reruns of some of the news and analysis programs broadcast by Fox Sports 1. Sports programming post-UFC includes overflow coverage of events aired by Fox Sports 1, such as Big East basketball, Mountain West football and basketball, and NASCAR, along with second-tier programming that formerly would have aired as part of the Fox Sports Networks schedule. Fox Sports 2 also shows select ARCA Menards Series races live. Limited coverage of the Australian Football League moved to Fox Sports 2 from Fox Soccer Plus for Pac-12 overflow in the future.In 2020, Fox Sports 2 started broadcasting weekly Major League Rugby matches as well as reruns of the 1989 roller derby program RollerGames.