Fox Sports and ESPN’s coverage of Major League Baseball All-Star festivities generated a ratings home run among last week’s live sports telecasts.  

Fox’s July 11 All-Star Game broadcast drew 7 million viewers to top all sports events for the week, according to Nielsen numbers published by SportsMedia Watch. The contest, won by the National League for its first victory over the American League since 2012, was the least-watched baseball All-Star game, dropping 7% from the previous low set last year. The game, however, still remains the most-watched All-Star Game among the major sports, according to SportsMedia Watch.

ESPN’s July 10 Home Run Derby telecast was the second-most watched live sports event last week with 5.52 million, but the number was down from last year’s 6.8 million viewers, and was the lowest since the 2018 event, according to Sports Business Journal. 

The conclusion of the CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer tournament placed several telecasts among the top 10 most watched events, including Univision’s coverage of the July 16 Mexico-Panama tournament final, which drew 4.32 million viewers. 

ESPN's July 16 telecast of the Wimbledon men's finals between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic finished fourth for the week with 3.19 million viewers, which was the biggest audience for the event since 2019. 

Also, ABC's July 15 WNBA All-Star Game drew 850,000 viewers, making it the league’s most-watched All-Star game in 16 years, according to ESPN. 

USA Network’s coverage of the Quaker State 400 NASCAR race drew the biggest audience of any live sports event during the July 4 holiday week. 

The network’s July 9 NASCAR Cup Series race averaged 2.5 million viewers to top all events in the week of July 3-8, according to Nielsen numbers published by SportsMedia Watch.

Four CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer telecasts finished among the top 10 most-watched events, including both Univision’s Spanish-language and FS1’s English-language telecasts of the July 8 U.S.-Canada match.

NBA top draft pick Victor Wembanyama’s July 7 NBA Summer League debut for the San Antonio Spurs drew 1.3 million viewers. The Spurs-Charlotte Hornets game helped ESPN set a viewership record for the offseason competition’s opening weekend, the programmer said.   

Also finishing in the top 10 was NBC’s coverage of the U.S. Women’s Open golf tournament finals on July 9, drawing 1.54 million viewers. Overall, NBC Sports said the Women’s Open delivered a total audience of 895,000 viewers across NBC and USA Network, up 118% over last year’s combined tournament coverage on both networks. 

Fox Sports have added English-language rights to the Concacaf Champions League as part of a broader deal between the two companies announced Monday.

As part of the deal, Fox Sports will air the Scotiabank Concacaf Champions League over the next three years, as well as the Concacaf Women’s Olympic Qualifiers -- which begin Tuesday (Jan. 28) on FS2 -- and the Men’s Olympic Qualifiers. Fox Sports also extends its Gold Cup coverage through 2023, according to the company.

“FOX Sports is excited to further its commitment to the sport of soccer through this new agreement with Concacaf,” said Mark Silverman, Fox Sports President, National Networks in a statement. “The U.S. Women’s National Team captivated a country with its World Cup victory last summer, and we’re honored to showcase this inspirational team once again as they begin their Olympic journey this week. Furthermore, we look forward to offering more men’s soccer, including the next two editions of the Gold Cup and the U.S. Men’s National Team Olympic Qualifiers.”

Added Concacaf President Victor Montagliani: “Fox Sports is an excellent partner for Concacaf and we are extremely pleased they have invested in our rights across so many competitions, beginning with what should be an exciting Women’s Olympic Qualifiers. They have an outstanding track record of delivering high-quality football coverage that reaches big audiences making this great news for fans, international teams across the region and clubs competing in our Champions League.”

Though the consumer virtual reality sector hasn’t taken off as rapidly as some had hoped, content providers continue to experiment with and refine their VR experiences for when this emerging medium becomes a mass-market phenomenon.

Fox Sports has been a key member of this group as it continues to work with companies such as NextVR and LiveLike on VR experiences that can be access on smartphone-powered headsets such as the Samsung Gear VR and its authenticated apps for iOS and Android mobile devices.

“If you believe in something, you want to get good do at it before it really takes off so, when it does, you’re not learning about it for the first time,” Michael Davies, senior vice president of field and technical operations at Fox Sports, said.

Fox Sports’ latest major VR endeavor will center around the CONCACAF Gold Cup, as the programmer and LiveLike will create a “virtual suite” for three fixtures, starting with the just-completed July 8 U.S.-Panama match. They’ll follow with similar efforts for matches set for July 22 or 23, and for the Gold Cup championship, set for Monday, July 26.

As had been done in previous VR partnerships with LiveLike for events such as UEFA Champions League matches, the Big Ten Football Championship Game and the Big East Men’s Basketball Tournament, the virtual suite experience will include a 2D live feed of the Gold Cup games along with the ability to manually access other camera angles, lean on a director’s cut that auto-selects those angles, watch replays of the action, and view some pre-produced content delivered in the 360-degree format.

New this time around is a social component allowing the viewer and three others to be present in the virtual suite to watch the game (represented by individual avatars), to use the suite’s interactive components and to interact with each other. Enabling that experience is a new “Social” tab and a “Join Friends” button, which connects the user to Facebook upon authorization. Users can also have the system select a viewing partner at random, and can toggle the social component on or off.

Davies said the social component delivers a “hybrid” experience with elements of how consumers watch live sports — alone on TV; with others on the TV at home; at a restaurant or bar; or live at the venue itself.

“Hopefully this is something that takes the medium to the next level,” Davies said, noting that sports viewing tends to drive a “tribal” form of activity. “We’re hoping to recreate that. We’re excited to see how it works out.”

So are advertisers. Buffalo Wild Wings is on board as the sponsor for the Gold Cup VR experience, and follows sponsorships for past efforts from Jeep, Audi, Lexus and Toyota.

Davies said most viewers who watch these VR experiences are doing it without a headset, opting to access it on the app for smartphones and tablets, but that there’s a “fair amount” of activity from viewers who tune in using the Gear VR. Fox Sports has also been keeping close tabs on not just how many consumers join the experience, but how many are coming back to it, he added.

Support for higher-end platforms, such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and the PlayStation VR, as well as the smartphone-based Google Daydream, are on the product roadmap, Davies said.

Davies also hopes coming standalone VR headsets in the works from Google and Facebook-owned Oculus will reduce consumer friction into those higher-end experiences.

“That, I think, is going to propel this thing beyond those people who are the true believers,” he said.