How Fox 32 Chicago acquired local rights to Packers-Bears wild-card game
Fox has been the home for most Bears games since the network began airing the NFL’s NFC package in 1994. But Fox 32 Chicago wants that relationship to be deeper.
The NFL mandates that games broadcast on cable or a streaming service be available over the air in the participating teams’ local markets. Last season, Fox 32 won the bidding for the Bears’ game in London that aired on NFL Network.
This season, Fox 32 made a deal with Amazon to carry Prime Video’s broadcast of the Bears-Eagles game on Black Friday. The deal included a rider that said if Prime ended up with a Bears game in the playoffs, Fox 32 would carry it for a fee.
As luck would have it, the NFL granted Prime the mother of all Bears playoff games, a matchup with the Packers on Saturday night.
“We want every Bears game we can get our hands on,” said Sean O’Heir, Fox 32’s vice president of news content & programming. “We love the Bears.”
With good reason. According to Nielsen, the Black Friday game Nov. 28 gave Fox 32 a household rating of 16.2 (roughly 592,000 households). The Bears-Packers game Dec. 7 in Fox’s late-Sunday window drew a 27.0 rating (987,000) on Fox 32, the station’s highest of the season. The teams’ second meeting on Dec. 20, a Saturday night, drew a third-best 25.4 rating (928,000).
The Bears are a rising tide that lifts all boats. Fox 32 can sell a limited amount of local advertising during games and promote its other programming. That Saturday viewership, which averaged 1.7 million local viewers 18 and older, bled into postgame coverage, with up to 600,000 such viewers continuing to watch within an hour after the game.
“I think the big thing is that we get eyeballs,” said O’Heir, who joined the station in February 2024. “It’s a holistic thing because, being a Fox station, the Bears being an NFC team, we’re always going to end up with a good chunk of Bears games. And we love to have the preseason games, buy any game that goes to market and [carry] the Bears’ shows. This really is the home of the Bears.”
On Saturday, Fox 32 will air pregame coverage from 12:30 to 2 p.m., before Fox’s coverage of the Rams-Panthers wild-card game. Longtime sports anchor Lou Canellis will host alongside analyst and former Bears quarterback Jim Miller, with Cassie Carlson reporting. They’ll return for postgame coverage.
Marquee Sports Network has the Bears’ official postgame show, allowing it to carry news conferences and locker-room interviews live. But the agreement has a carveout that allows Fox 32 to air a postgame show on a day with a singleheader, such as Saturday.
As soon as word got out that Fox 32 would carry the game – which will be called by Al Michaels, analyst Kirk Herbstreit and reporter Kaylee Hartung – fans on the outskirts of the Chicago designated market area began asking if they’d get it. Fox 32’s DMA extends north into Racine County in Wisconsin, east into LaSalle County, south into Iroquois County and east into LaPorte County in Indiana. It also reaches part of Berrien County in Michigan.
Carrying the game required Fox 32 to shuffle its schedule. To accommodate the pregame show, Fox’s broadcast of the Kansas-West Virginia men’s basketball game, which starts at 11 a.m., will simulcast on Fox Chicago+ (WPWR-Channel 50). Fox 32 will run a crawl with an explainer. Fox’s broadcast of the Maryland-UCLA game, which starts at 7 p.m., will move to classic game-show channel Buzzr, Channel 32.3. That’s because Fox Chicago+ will carry a Wolves games at 7.
O’Heir is keeping Fox Chicago+ busy. Last year, it carried 134 live sporting events, including HBCU basketball and football games, Hounds rugby, Stars soccer and Wolves hockey. And he has more planned for it.
“More and more local programming, and I love all kinds of local sports,” O’Heir said. “I’m going to put as much sports as I can on that channel, and in 2026, you’ll see more live local programming, sports and non-sports, on there.”