Fox Sports, Indeed Team to Fill New Role: Chief World Cup Watcher for Fox One Streaming Service

Attention, soccer fans: Fox Sports may have the summer job of your dreams.

Executives at the Fox Corp.-backed sports-media outlet aren’t looking for the next Colin Cowherd or Tom Brady. Starting Tuesday, however, they will have their eyes peeled for a sports fan who can watch every minute of the 104 matches in this year’s FIFA World Cup — all from a transparent cube that will be set up in Times Square.  Online jobs site Indeed will help the search for the new employee and viewers will be reminded of that fact as he or she goes about the task of keeping tabs on all the action.

In a different era, a sports sponsor would simply run ads. In the current market, such old-school techniques won’t get an advertiser to the goal, says Jennifer Warren, vice president of marketing at Indeed, during a recent interview.  “Tapping into fandom isn’t about slapping a logo on something. It’s probably the worst thing you can do. We see this as an opportunity to do something useful.”

The person who gets hired for the job will get a salary of $50,000 and will be assigned to watch all matches between June 11 and July 19 from the custom viewing space in Manhattan. Their assignment? Create and share social content throughout the tournament. The position? The “Fox One Chief World Cup Watcher Hired Through Indeed.” The job title nods to the company’s new use of its subscription streaming outlet, Fox One, as a vehicle to reach consumers who don’t have a more traditional cable subscription.

The hope at Fox Sports is that a broader sports fan, not necessarily a soccer die hard, will get the role. “The ideal person is less interested in breaking down, Brazil’s game plan, and is more like ,”Do they really have a guy named Fred?’ says aid Robert Gottlieb, president of marketing at Fox Sports. “General enthusiasm is the qualification, rather than having to be a statistician about every person’s goal percentage.”

Fox intends to highlight its “Chief World Cup Watcher” during game telecasts, says Gottlieb, and is likely to dispatch athletes and guest stars to the person’s location, along, potentially, with products from other sponsors.

Advertisers are increasingly turning to sports moments to help make their point with a potential customer base. Berkshire Hathaway’s Duracell hopes to achieve marketing goals with a new ad featuring Lionel Messi being powered by the company’s well-known batteries in ads that will play during World Cup telecasts on Fox and Telemundo. Heineken’s Dos Equis has arranged to become part of the action during select college-football games telecast across ESPN, ABC, SEC and ACC Network getting special on-screen graphics and other elements whenever one of the teams tries to “Go for Dos” and score a two-point conversion. LinkedIn recently struck an alliance with Fernando Mendoza that had him celebrate the NFL Draft during a commercial break in ESPN’s coverage of the event.

“One of our big focus area this year is really tapping into sports fandom,” says Warren, the Indeed executive. The company is also eager to tout new technology Indeed clients can tap to find job candidates with the exact qualities or skills they are seeking,

To enter the scrum for the new job, contestants must head to their Indeed profile, or create one, then update their skills to make sure their journalism and content creation skills are prominent. They should update their profile to the setting “Employers can find you,” so the Fox Sports recruiting team can find it, and share a short video that explains why they are the right candidate for the job. They can stand out with the hashtag #ChiefWorldCupWatcher.

Advertisers need to be part of the game, says Warren, or else risk being passed over by consumers. “Younger generations are choosing brands based on affiliations with things they are passionate about,” she says, and music and sports tend to be two areas to which this cohort is drawn.

The “Fox One Chief World Cup Watcher Hired Through Indeed” will begin their role one week before the tournament begins on Saturday, June 6,and the official hire will be revealed live that night during a Fox  broadcast of the Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees.