The next FIFA World Cup is years away — but one game is already afoot.
The international governing body behind the popular global tournament is opening the bidding process for rights to the event for 2030 in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and will offer an option for interesting parties to also try and secure rights for the 2024 championship as well, says Romy Gai, the group’s chief business officer, during a recent interview.
“The idea is to be extremely flexible, the executive tells Variety, in order to “try to get the best momentum after the great success we had during World Cup 2026.” Proposals are due by midnight November 19.
Fox is estimated to have paid $485 million for its World Cup rights, while NBCU is estimated to have paid $600 million for Telemundo‘s. A FIFA spokesman declined to comment on the value of previous rights fees, but Gai said the organization expected to secure more in the next round of negotiations, owing to the growing value of sports to media companies and the fact that the rights have not come up for bid in a decade and a half. Fox Sports and Telemundo telecast the event in 2018, 2022 and 2024.
Streamers “can deliver a bigger opportunity to get in touch with new audiences,” he says. “We want to be open and flexible, to hear what they need. Ultimately, the scope is to engage more and deeper with our fans around the world.”
The bidding is likely to attract a host of both old-school and new-tech media companies, all eager to secure the massive crowds that advertisers continue to covet. In the streaming era, audiences that watch programming simultaneously have become very difficult to generate. Most viewers cobble together their own schedules of comedies, dramas, reality shows, movie and sports, toggling between sundry streaming services that range from HBO Max to Netflix to Fox One to Disney+. But Madison Avenue can’t make cash registers ring by targeting small groups of consumers streaming a repeat of “Mad Men” during primetime hours.
The most recent World Cup, which took place across the United States, was a ratings and ad-revenue bonanza for both Fox Corp. and Comcast, generating hundreds of millions in cash from advertising. While the Super Bowl is the media-industry’s biggest annual event, the World Cup, with its weeks of game play and ability to attract audiences around the globe, is a behemoth that cannot be ignored.
Interest in the tournament has given rise to large groups watching games in bars and friends’ homes, creating “more of a socio-cultural event than probably anyone could have imagined in their wildest dreams,” Fox Sports CEO and Executive Producer Eric Shanks told Variety earlier this year. FIFA says that over 39 days and 104 matches, the tournament averaged 13.5 million viewers per match on linear and streaming platforms, up 166% from the 2022 tournament in Qatar. Every U.S. men’s national team match drew more than 20 million viewers, while the Final attracted an average of 63 million, making it the most-watched soccer match in US history.
Comcast, owner of NBCU and Telemundo said Thursday that World Cup telecasts boosted the media operation’s overall U.S. ad revenue by 14.6% during the third quarter. Without the games, U.S. ad revenue would have increased a mere 0.3%.
FIFA will consider doing separate deals for linear and streaming, Gai says, but also packages that include both platforms. FIFA is open to a single company handling all aspects of a World Cup plan, but also to joint bids, he adds. FIFA’s preference, he says, is to keep Spanish-language and English-language rights under the same umbrella, but even that condition “is not mandatory.” Netflix recently secured U.S. rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cup and will telecast in both English and Spanish.
“I expect, honestly, a multitude of very different possibilities we can then sit down and discuss,” says Gai. FIFA in a statement says it will look for “the entity, or entities, best placed to deliver comprehensive, high-quality coverage in the United States and Puerto Rico, reach large audiences through innovative ways to watch, and contribute revenues for the benefit of football.”
The FIFA World Cup 2030 will be hosted in Morocco, Portugal and Spain, with three centenary celebration matches in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay marking 100 years since the first FIFA World Cup was played in 1930. Saudi Arabia will stage the FIFA World Cup 2034. This could raise a sticking point in negotiations, as U.S. companies might worry that games not in U.S. time zones will generate smaller audiences.
Which companies will want to bid? Netflix already has the rights to stream the 2030 World Cup in Spain and Angorra.