The U.S. soccer team may not have qualified for the World Cup, but Fox Sports is still seeing a big boost in app downloads as soccer fans are looking to stream matches of the tournament. The Fox Sports app was the 3rd most downloaded iPhone app in the U.S. this past Monday, according to app analytics specialist App Annie.
That’s especially notable considering its astronomic rise: On June 7, the same app hadn’t even ranked in the Top 1000 of most-downloaded iPhone apps in the U.S.
The Fox Sports app has been equally successful on Android, where it also wasn’t in the Top 1000 before the World Cup began. On June 18, it had become the 5th most downloaded app on Google Play.
Fox has the English-language broadcast rights for the 2018 World Cup, with NBC’s Telemundo broadcasting and streaming the tournament in Spanish. Fox is showing a small amount of the matches on its broadcast channel, but has relegated most of them to Fox Sports, while also streaming each and every match via the Fox Sports app.
According to App Annie, Fox Sports is using some good old-fashioned SEO to make sure that soccer fans find its app on the app stores. The network changed the name of the app to “FOX Sports: FIFA World Cup” and “FOX Sports: Watch 2018 FIFA World Cup Live” in time for the beginning of the Cup. The app has also received updated keywords to attract more World Cup-specific search traffic.
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This type of search optimization seems to be paying off: The app ranked #2 among the sports apps on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play earlier this week, according to App Annie.