Facebook Inc. (FB) Making Fox Sports More Social

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) understands the living room talk during college-football games – the trash talk, the bragging about which team is superior, and who’s got the next batch of wings. Fox Sports also understands it too, which is why the two have now aligned to make college-football telecasts more socially interactive by announcing Social Sidelines for Fox Sports viewers and Facebook users alike. The new platform will launch during Saturday’s telecast of Hawaii vs. USC in Los Angeles and will eventually expand to other sports broadcasts on the Fox Sports family of networks.

The Fox Sports Facebook page will be the main source for most the Social Sidelines integration.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) chief of community partnerships Nick Grudin said in a statement, “Across Facebook, we see sporting events inspire passionate conversations, and team allegiances create strong communities. Facebook-Fox Sports Social Sidelines blends the live sports TV viewing experience with the social activity that’s already happening.”

Under the arrangement, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) will track chatter to note the teams that get the most comments and conversations – positive and negative. Fox Sports will post the 10 teams each week that are getting the most buzz, ask for user responses to pertinent on-air questions and have fan-of-the-week contests.

Also, Fox Sports editors would serve as a guest editor on the Facebook.com/Sports page during Saturday night college football games, and Fox Sports personalities would be more active on their Facebook pages during the season.

“College football is the perfect environment, with the right demographics, for integrating game telecasts and social media,” said Chris Hannan of Fox Sports Media Group in a release. “Our partnership with Facebook creates unique content for fans to engage with all week, especially on game-day across our entire family of networks.”