A score bug is a digital on-screen graphic which is displayed at either the top or lower third bottom of the television screen during a broadcast of a sporting event in order to display the current score and other statistics.[1]
The concept of a persistent score bug for association football matches was devised by Sky Sports head David Hill, who was dissatisfied over having to wait to see what the score was after tuning into a match in-progress. The score bug was introduced during Sky's coverage of the newly-formed English Premier League in August 1992. Hill's boss repeatedly demanded that the graphic be removed, describing it as the "stupidest thing [he] had ever seen". Hill defied the boss's demands and kept the graphic in place. ITV introduced a score bug at the start of the 1993-94 football season, and the BBC introduced a score bug towards the end of 1993.
The concept was introduced to the United States by ABC Sports and ESPN during coverage of the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Their justification for the graphic was to provide a location for cycling sponsor logos, in order to allow matches to air without commercial interruption.[2]
With the acquisition of rights to the National Football League by BSkyB's American sibling Fox (a fellow venture of Rupert Murdoch), Hill became the first president of Fox Sports. Fox's version of the score bug was branded as the "Fox Box", and was part of its inaugural season of NFL coverage in 1994. Variety criticized it as an "annoying see-through clock and score graphic" and expressed concern for people "who actually watched the beginning of the game and would rather have their screen clear of graphics".[3]
Hill once received a death threat from an irate viewer, with a specific emphasis on him being a "foreigner",[4] but the score bug soon became a ubiquitous feature of all sports broadcasts in the USA in the years that followed.[5]
Dick Ebersol of NBC Sports opposed the idea of a score bug, because he thought that fans would dislike seeing more graphics on the screen, and would change the channel from blowout games.[6]
Since the 2010s, the on-air design and positioning of some score bugs have been influenced by the needs of Internet video (especially when viewing an event on devices with smaller screens), including bugs noticeably larger than prior iterations designed with television viewing in mind, and Fox having adopted a score bug positioned in the bottom-center of the screen for football (easing the ability for the bug to remain visible when highlights are cropped for square videos posted on social media).[7] [8] [9]