FIFA appears poised to bundle English and Spanish-language World Cup rights in the next set of negotiations.
Ahead of negotiations that are expected to begin in the coming weeks, FIFA has informed interested bidders that it is “likely” to sell English and Spanish-language rights to the 2030 and 2034 World Cup as a single, combined package, according to Alex Sherman of CNBC. Currently, Fox Sports owns English-language rights and NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo owns the Spanish-language package. Previously, those rights were held by Disney and Univision, respectively.
FIFA already bundled English and Spanish-language rights to the Women’s World Cup, which next year and in 2031 will air exclusively on Netflix in the United States.
According to Sherman, interested parties for the 2030 and 2034 men’s tournaments include Netflix, Disney and Google-owned YouTube, with Amazon and Apple mentioned as potential bidders.
Selling a combined package would presumably drive up the cost of the rights to the men’s tournament, which last hit the open market in 2011. Fox and Telemundo won the bidding then, acquiring the 2018 and 2022 men’s tournaments (and the 2015 and 2019 women’s editions). The incumbents were then awarded this year’s World Cup (and the 2023 women’s tournament) without those rights hitting the market, resulting in rights fees that are reportedly well below market rates. The New York Times reported this year that Fox was paying $485 million for this year’s tournament, and CNBC’s report Tuesday put the price tag for Telemundo’s rights at $600 million.
Per Sherman, multiple companies are setting a budget of $1.5-2.0 billion for the rights, a figure that is reportedly expected to price out NBCUniversal. Telemundo EVP/Sports Joaquin Duro previously told Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal that the company was “beyond exploring” the prospect of adding English-language rights to its existing Spanish-language package.
A combined English and Spanish-language package would also prevent the current circumstance of the U.S. rightsholders having to compete against each other for viewers. While it stands to reason that most viewers will choose the broadcast that corresponds with their primary language, no other event the magnitude of the World Cup offers two separate broadcasts offered by competing media companies. The result is that even for their largest World Cup audiences, both Fox and Telemundo are missing out on several million viewers.
