How the World Cup became a US success story

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The 2026 World Cup is breaking world records: Brazil’s CazéTV YouTube is broadcasting the country’s opening match against Morocco. exceeded 12 million concurrent viewersa new YouTube event. The match between South Korea and the Czech Republic was played by 3.86 million viewers in South Korea at the peak, doubling the previous record set by BTS. And the BBC shut down more than 600,000 streams at once for the France vs Senegal match, making it the biggest event shown in 4K for the broadcaster.

Even in the United States, where football is traditionally not seen as widely as other sports, the Championship seems to be very interesting. The Mexico vs. South Korea game attracted an audience of 6.1 million viewers to Telemundo’s platforms, making it the largest stream of Spanish soccer broadcast to the US audience to date. And the opening game of the United States team attracted attention 1.1 million viewers streaming on Tubi alone, making it the most played English-language game in World Cup history.

A country’s World Cup success is a direct result of impossible business decisions, legal challenges, and pressures – a kind of windfall for the beautiful sport.

The key idea surrounding the 2026 World Cup was made in 2010, long before the sport was on anyone’s radar.

Back then, FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a country where the summer heat continues 104 degrees Fahrenheit. When the soccer federation decided to move the tournament to the winter, the US broadcaster Fox threatened to sue because the change in schedule affected its existing programs.

This led to FIFA making a deal with Fox and Telemundo for the 2026 rights in 2015, he says. without thinking each competitor. Had Disney and Univision been part of the bidding process, the rights would have cost more, and Telemundo owner NBCUniversal would have walked away empty-handed.

But thanks to a no-advertisement agreement, which was brought about by the summer heat in Qatar, NBCUniversal is now offering a Spanish-language feed of every game on its Peacock syndicate for just $11 a month.

Speaking of Spanish: The fact that US soccer fans have two competing channels, Fox and Telemundo, to watch live games goes back to the long-held belief that Americans don’t care about soccer. Or, more specifically, non-Hispanic Americans don’t care about football. (Approx three quarters of US Latinos they call themselves football fans; (22% of Hispanics identify as “very conservative” compared to only 7% of non-Hispanics.)

It’s true that World Cup viewing in the US has lagged behind other major sports. This year’s Super Bowl was watched by more than 125 million viewers, while less 26 million The Americans prepared for the finals of the 2022 World Cup.

However, the population of the country is changing, and very fast. It’s available now 68 million Latinos in the United States, up from 35 million in the year 2000. Add the great success of the US Women’s soccer team on the world stage and all that it has done in the game, and things start to change: According to the 2025 survey, soccer is now in the public domain. more popular than baseball in the United States.

All of this could make the US rights to broadcast the World Cup very expensive. Others only speculate that FIFA may start selling English- and Spanish-language broadcast rights in a single package going forward, which would make the tournament more expensive for broadcasters and US viewers.

Viewers who prefer to watch the Cup in English also have a cheaper option available to them: Not only does Fox’s Tubi stream select free games, the company’s streaming service Fox One offers access to every game for $20 a month – which was not how Fox viewed the cost of the tournament.

In February 2024, Fox, Warner Bros. Known as Venu, the channel is supposed to combine sports programming from ESPN, Fox Sports, and networks like TNT and TBS under one roof.

Venu was good news for die-hard fans who have been frustrated by the increasingly fragmented nature of sports, with games even from the same league often spread across multiple pay-per-view platforms. However, bundling both apps came with a hefty price tag: Venu had to spend $42.99 per month for setup.

These plans were derailed due to legal pressure and a lawsuit filed by Fubo TV, the owner of Venu. pull the plug for what they did in early 2025. Fox instead decided to go it alone, launching Fox One as a sports streaming service a year ago. The proposal reduced the price that football fans had to pay to play English music by 50 percent.

Paid streaming trumps pirates – for now

Fox has streamed the entire 2022 World Cup for free on Tubi. When the broadcaster announced that it wanted to move many games behind a paywall this time, I thought that this would lead to a common trend: Faced with subscription fees, sports fans instead choose to pay a small fee for a VPN that allows them to watch foreign broadcasters like the BBC or Germany’s ARD.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. ExpressVPN is a sponsor of the World Cup, and other VPN providers have also been marketing their services to soccer fans.

However, preliminary data shows that these messages are not reaching consumers. US download numbers for VPN apps have been at their lowest since the start of the World Cup, according to data analytics startup Appfigures shared with me.

Subscription channels and live TV shows such as Peacock, Fox Sports, and Tubi saw their downloads increase by 150 percent since June 11, according to Appfigures. And on Google Play, Fox One, and Peacock right now among the Top 5 most downloaded programs.

All of this seems to indicate that, for now, paid services are winning. And even though it took some unexpected events to get to this point, hopefully broadcasters have learned the right lesson: Get your services right, and people will pay to watch every goooooal.