On December 17, 1993, the NFL selected Fox's bid and signed a four-year contract with Fox to award it the rights to televise regular season and playoff (as well as select preseason) games from the NFC, beginning with the 1994 season; the initial contract also included the exclusive U.S. television rights to broadcast Super Bowl XXXI in 1997.Fox lured commentators Pat Summerall, John Madden, Dick Stockton, Matt Millen, James Brown and Terry Bradshaw, as well as many behind-the-scenes management and production personnel from CBS Sports to staff the network's NFL coverage.On September 9, 1994, Fox was awarded the broadcast television rights to the National Hockey League (NHL) in a $155 million bid (amounting to $31 million annually);[15] as a result, it became the first broadcast network to be awarded a national television contract to carry NHL games, which longtime NHL Commissioner John Ziegler had long thought to be unattainable[16] (NHL games had not aired regularly on a national broadcast network – outside of select championship and All-Star games, and time buy basis airings of ESPN telecasts on ABC from 1992 to 1994 – since NBC's telecast of the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals, as networks were not willing to commit to broadcasting a large number of games due to low viewership).[25] With the replacement of the BCS with the College Football Playoff, Fox lost the broadcasting rights to the 2015 Cotton Bowl Classic onwards again to ESPN.[28] In August 2011, Fox Sports announced it had reached a seven-year broadcast agreement with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), ending the mixed martial arts promotion's relationship with Spike.In February 2015, Fox's contract was extended to 2026 (which was ultimately awarded to a joint North American bid led by the United States), in what was reported to be compensation for the rescheduling of the 2022 tournament to late-November/mid-December (which will compete with the regular seasons of the NFL).[32][33] On August 6, 2013, Fox Sports announced a 12-year deal to broadcast the championships of the United States Golf Association (USGA), including the U.S. Open, beginning in 2015.[43] On May 6, 2019, Fox Sports announced a multi-year broadcast deal with the new incarnation XFL, which went on hiatus midway through its first season, but would return in 2023.[53][54][55] In November 2021, it was announced that Fox Sports had acquired English-language rights to UEFA national team matches under a six-year deal from 2022 to 2028, replacing ESPN.[56] In January 2022, Fox announced that it would sub-license portions of this package to FuboTV, focusing on the Nations League and selected matches from the European Championships.The network would air content from Major League Baseball, the UFC, NASCAR, soccer (including the FIFA World Cup) and multiple college sports events (including owning rights to Big East basketball and its annual postseason basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden).[68] On September 2, 2013, Fox Soccer was replaced by FXX, an entertainment-based sister network to FX with a focus on comedy programming.[70] For Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, Fox Sports produced its first telecast in a 16:9, 480p enhanced-definition format marketed as "Fox Widescreen"; while promoted as having better quality than standard definition, and being the first U.S. sporting event produced completely in a widescreen format, it was not true high definition, but still matched the aspect ratio of HDTV sets.However, NASCAR and MLB broadcasts reinstated their own theme music in 2016 and 2020, respectively, and the CBB on FOX telecasts were switched over to "Roundball Rock", which was formerly used by the NBA on NBC, in 2019.It featured a translucent black rectangle, a baseball diamond graphic for baseball broadcasts on the far left, the team abbreviations in white with their scores in yellow boxes (the boxes were white for NFL broadcasts until Super Bowl XXXVI, when the coloring was changed to yellow), then the quarter or inning, time or number of outs, pitch count/speed (used for baseball broadcasts), and the logo of the Fox Sports event property whose game is being telecast (such as NFL on Fox or MLB on Fox) on the far right.During baseball broadcasts, the diamond graphic appeared in middle-justification and was slimmed down to just the three main bases, unlike other implements which included home plate.At the beginning of the 2010 NFL pre-season, Fox debuted a new graphics package for its football coverage – an upgraded version of the 2006 design with a "much more colorful 3D look."[85] Fox continues to use Vizrt software, and began to increasingly utilize laptops to run its on-air graphics as opposed to full systems (maintained as backups).[85] The introduction of the package to NASCAR for the 2018 season saw Fox once again adopt a vertical leaderboard for the running order, initially within an opaque sidebar before switching to a translucent design for the Daytona 500.[88] The first of these packages for football debuted at Super Bowl LIV in February 2020, which featured a theme based on parallelograms, a centered, pod-like scoreboard, and stylized illustrations of key players.[97] The following are the charities supported during the history of the program: In May 2019, amid the state-by-state legalization of sports betting in the United States following the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, Fox Corporation entered into a joint venture with The Stars Group to develop gaming products under the brand Fox Bet.They included free-to-play games such as Fox Bet Super 6, and a real-money mobile sportsbook operating in several states where they are legal.Syndicated programming (either in the form of feature films, series or both) and/or infomercials scheduled by the network's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates, as well as occasional Fox Sports-produced specials and Fox-supplied preview specials for upcoming primetime shows fill Fox stations' weekend afternoon schedules on days with limited to no sports programming.Some of the network's sports telecasts (most frequently, college football and Sunday afternoon NFL games, and the World Series) delay or outright pre-empt regularly scheduled local evening newscasts on Fox stations due to typical overruns past a set time block or pre-determined later start times; a few Fox affiliates that maintain news departments (such as WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama and WVUE-DT in New Orleans) have opted not to air or have cancelled early evening newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays due to frequent sports preemptions in that daypart, while others (such as WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Missouri) instead reschedule their weekend early evening news programs to an earlier timeslot if possible when Fox is scheduled to air an evening game or race.