Fox Sports 2 (FS2) is an American sports-oriented pay television

channel Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...

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 Century City is a 176-acre (71.2 ha) neighborhood and business district in Los Angeles, California. Located on the Westside to the south of Santa Monica Boulevard around 10 miles (16 km) west of Downtown Los Angeles, Century City is one of ...

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 Skateboarding is an extreme sport, action sport originating in the United States that involves riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as a recreational activity, an art form, an entertainment industry Profession, job, and a ...

snowboarding Snowboarding is a recreational and competitive activity that involves descending a snow-covered surface while standing on a snowboard that is almost always attached to a rider's feet. It features in the Winter Olympic Games and Winter Paralympi ...

, wakeboarding, motocross,

surfing Surfing is a surface water sport in which an individual, a surfer (or two in tandem surfing), uses a board to ride on the forward section, or face, of a moving wave of water, which usually carries the surfer towards the shore. Waves suitabl ...

BMX BMX, an abbreviation for bicycle motocross or bike motocross, is a cycle sport performed on BMX bikes, either in competitive BMX racing or freestyle BMX, or else in general street or off-road recreation. History BMX began during the earl ...

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 (62.3 percent of households with cable TV) receive Fox Sports 2.

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 compan
Extreme
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. Another spoke was the network's name, from a concept conceived and launched by independent producer Chris Braly as a weekly regional music and extreme sports broadcast that debuted on September 8, 2001, on WB affiliate

WFLI-TV WFLI-TV (channel 53) is a television station licensed to Cleveland, Tennessee, United States, serving the Chattanooga area as an affiliate of The CW and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by MPS Media, which maintains a local marketing agreement (LMA) wit ...

(channel 53, now a CW affiliate) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, using paid programming time on that station on Saturday evenings. News Corporation eventually negotiated a buyout of the concept and trademark in late 2003. The regional weekly version of Fuel TV aired its final episode on WFLI in September of that year. 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 Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guid ...

events. By the second half of 2012, Fuel TV's lineup consisted solely of combat sports (such as MMA and boxing) and reruns of reality programs from sister channel Speed. With the

2012–13 Premier League The 2012–13 Premier League (known as the Barclays Premier League for sponsorship reasons) was the 21st season of the Premier League, the English professional league for association football clubs, since its establishment in 1992, and the 114 ...

season, extra live and recorded Premier League matches were carried on Fuel TV, giving Fox Soccer three venues 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 Survival Sunday is a term used to refer to final day coverage of the Premier League in England. The phrase is primarily used by Sky Sports, when relegation places are still to be decided, and is used on all the adverts for the end of season footba ...

" 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 (RFL)

Super League The Super League (officially known as the Betfred Super League due to sponsorship from Betfred and legally known as Super League Europe), is the top-level of the British rugby league system. At present the league consists of twelve teams, of wh ...

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 (which was officially announced by Fox on March 5, 2013, for an August 17 launch), it was reported that Fox was planning to rebrand Fuel TV as a companion network – 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 a 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 (such as UFC programs) remained an integral part of the lineup. Fuel's signature UFC program, ''

UFC Tonight The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is owned and operated by Zuffa, a wholly owned subsidiary of Endeavor Group Holdings. It is the largest MMA ...

'', 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 ''UFC 200: Tate vs. Nunes'' was a mixed martial arts event produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship held on July 9, 2016, at the T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. It was the final UFC event under the ownership of ...

preliminary card (moved due to baseball overruns on FS1) 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+ ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

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 The Mountain West Conference (MW) is one of the collegiate athletic conferences affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) (formerly I-A). The MW officially began operations o ...

football and basketball, and NASCAR, along with second-tier programming that formerly would have aired as part of the

Fox Sports Networks Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by The Walt Disney Company on Mar ...

schedule. Fox Sports 2 also shows select ARCA Menards Series races live. Limited coverage of the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

moved to Fox Sports 2 from Fox Soccer Plus (simulcast from Australia via the Seven Network along with full coverage of the State of Origin series live from Australia's

Nine Network The Nine Network (stylised 9Network, commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by parent company Nine Entertainment and is one of five main free-to-air television netw ...

. This move has proven popular with fans in the United States due to the growing fanbase for

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

in the country. According to the websites of the Australian Football Association of North America and Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Sports has extended its current deal until 2016. Fox Sports 2 televised some regular season games and finals matches, while most of the 2015 season was aired on Fox Soccer Plus. As of 2019, UFC-related programming no longer airs on the channel due to UFC's new deal with ESPN which started that same year. In May 2018, it was reported that due to viewer backlash surrounding a preemption of part of a Washington/

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

football game from FS1 to FS2 due to a

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is a pickup truck racing series owned and operated by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and is the only series in NASCAR to race production pickup truck based stock cars. The series is one of th ...

race, that Fox would now prefer using Fox Business Network (which has distribution more in line with FS1, and only carries non-critical paid programming on weekends) for

Pac-12 The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...

overflow in the future. In 2020, Fox Sports 2 started broadcasting weekly

Major League Rugby Major League Rugby (MLR or USMLR) is a professional rugby union competition and the top-level championship for clubs in North America. In the 2022 season it was contested by thirteen teams: twelve from the United States and one from Canada. Off ...

matches as well as reruns of the 1989

roller derby Roller derby is a roller skating contact sport played by two teams of fifteen members. Roller derby is played by approximately 1,250 amateur leagues worldwide, mostly in the United States. Game play consists of a series of short scrimmages (jam ...

program ''

RollerGames ''RollerGames'' is a U.S. television series that presented a theatrical version of the sport of roller derby, and featured a number of skaters who had been in the Roller Games league (1961–1975), as well as younger participants. It was broadca ...

''.

References

External links