Netflix joins Disney and YouTube in chasing World Cup
Live sports are the last thing on American television that everyone still watches at the same moment.
Scripted hits get binged alone. Award shows shed viewers every year. But when the national team plays a knockout match in July, tens of millions of people show up at once, and advertisers pay dearly for the privilege.
This summer proved the point emphatically. The United States men's July 1 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina drew nearly 26.4 million viewers and became "the most-watched English-language soccer telecast in the country's history," according to Fox Sports.
The July 6 round of 16 loss to Belgium then topped it, pulling in 30 million viewers, reported ABC News.
Numbers like that rewrite negotiations. Fox Corp (FOXA) locked up this tournament at what now looks like a garage-sale price, and the next American rights deal will be struck in a completely different market. Buyers with far deeper pockets, and far bigger subscriber ambitions, have been watching those ratings closely.
Netflix (NFLX), Walt Disney (DIS), and Alphabet's (GOOGL) YouTube "are all interested in challenging Fox" for the U.S. broadcast rights to the 2030 and 2034 World Cups, according to CNBC. Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) could also enter the mix, the report said.
Talks between the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and potential media partners are expected to begin within the next three months, the report indicated.
Streaming giants line up for the next World Cup
The structure of the sale is changing along with the guest list. FIFA has signaled that English- and Spanish-language U.S. rights will likely be sold together rather than separately, according to CNBC. The governing body last negotiated an American deal in 2011, an eternity ago in media terms.
Fox first won the package back then, and FIFA in 2015 extended the arrangement through 2026 without an open auction. That decision kept prices artificially low for more than a decade, and the money now on the table shows exactly how much has changed.
- Fox paid $485 million for English-language rights to the 2026 tournament, according to Front Office Sports.
- Telemundo, owned by Comcast (CMCSA), paid $600 million for the Spanish-language rights, CNBC confirmed.
- Media executives are budgeting between $1.5 billion and $2 billion per tournament for the combined package, according to CNBC.
Bundling the two languages is not a cosmetic change. Separate sales let bidders quietly count on a rival carrying the other half of the audience, which held prices down. One package means one winner pays for everything, and everyone else goes home with nothing.
Sellers rarely walk into a negotiation holding this many cards. "FIFA is going to get a huge increase for its U.S. rights," Sports Media Advisors CEO Doug Perlman told Front Office Sports.
Why streamers suddenly want the World Cup so badly
The short answer is that nothing else moves an audience like it. I have tracked every major sports rights deal the streamers have signed since the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson fight in late 2024, and the pattern is consistent.
They are not chasing long regular seasons. They are chasing global events that force millions of sign-ups in a single week.
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Netflix said as much in its own words. The company's live strategy is "all about delivering can't-miss, special event programming," according to a Netflix shareholder letter.
The streamer already holds U.S. rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women's World Cups, and it is closing in on one billion monthly viewers by 2027, as TheStreet highlighted. At that scale, a $2 billion swing at the men's tournament looks far less reckless than it would have three years ago.
The wild cards are just as serious. Amazon holds Champions League rights in the United Kingdom, and Apple owns global rights to Major League Soccer (MLS), according to CNBC. Both companies have shown they will pay up when a property fits their strategy.
YouTube already pays about $2 billion a year for the National Football League's (NFL) Sunday Ticket package, so it knows the price of premium live rights. Disney brings a different weapon.
A winning bid would let matches run across ESPN, ABC, and its streaming service simultaneously, an appealing option for FIFA after broadcast television delivered record numbers for Fox this summer, CNBC reported.
What a $2 billion World Cup means for viewers
Here is the part that touches your wallet and your living room. Two billion dollars per tournament has to be recouped somewhere, and the options are the usual ones: higher subscription prices, heavier advertising loads, or both.
There is also a real chance the men's World Cup moves partly or fully behind a login screen for the first time. Every tournament since 1994 has aired at least partly on free over-the-air television in the United States.
If Netflix or YouTube wins outright, that streak could end with the 2030 centenary edition, which Spain, Portugal, and Morocco will host with anniversary matches in South America.
Related: The World Cup may be about to get a lot bigger
The audience being auctioned is enormous. Combined English- and Spanish-language viewership for the Belgium match reached an estimated 47.9 million, according to AdImpact data cited by CNBC. An advertiser cannot buy that many Americans in one sitting anywhere else outside the Super Bowl.
Kickoff times will not help. Matches in 2030 will run five to six hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast, and Saudi Arabia's 2034 tournament sits even further out, squeezing the prime-time windows that produced this summer's records.
Investors, for their part, shrugged. Shares of Netflix, Disney, and Alphabet barely moved after the news broke. My read on that reaction is that the market has learned these bidding wars take years to resolve, and the winner's math depends entirely on the final price.
The World Cup bidding war is only getting started
None of this changes anything for the tournament playing out right now. This summer's matches stay exactly where they are, on Fox, FS1, and Telemundo, through the July 19 final. The fight is over what comes after.
FIFA now gets to run the most enviable auction in sports, and Fox will not easily surrender a franchise it spent 15 years building into a ratings machine. More than 103 million viewers have watched this tournament across Fox, FS1, and Tubi, according to Front Office Sports. Expect the incumbent to point at that reach in every meeting.
Watch the structure of the winning bid more than the name attached to it. A split deal pairing a streamer with a broadcast network would signal the paywall era is arriving gradually. A single knockout bid from Netflix or YouTube would mean it is arriving all at once.
Either way, the cheap World Cup is gone for good.
Related: Netflix has a stunning milestone in sight for 2027
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This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 10:03 AM.