FIFA is always in a pretty strong position when it comes to media rights negotiations. It’s the organization behind the biggest sporting event in the world, after all.
But today, they are taking the World Cup’s television rights to market after one of the most-watched soccer tournaments in American history. We won’t have concrete numbers on the final for a few days, but if the performance of the tournament up to that point is any indication, Spain’s victory over Argentina is going to end up as one of the most-watched TV shows of the year.
Where will FIFA take its crown jewel?
Every soccer fan probably has their preferred destination, but those preferences may be irrelevant. Nobody is going to come into these negotiations more motivated to win the broadcast rights to the 2030 and 2034 tournaments than Netflix.
The streaming pioneer is already set to be the home of FIFA’s Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031. It’s easy to think Netflix never wanted its relationship with FIFA to end there. The timing is perfect for the rights for the next two men’s tournaments to hit the market. FIFA can ask for more money than ever before and Netflix has never been more able to justify cutting a giant check.
The company isn’t in dire straits, but it has run into some problems recently. Adding podcast content from the likes of Barstool and The Ringer doesn’t seem to have excited anyone. Hit shows cannot retain their big audiences into a second season. The most recent news, that Netflix will eliminate one of its two annual viewership reports going forward, certainly raised a few eyebrows.
Wall Street has responded exactly how you might expect. Netflix stock is currently trading at its lowest price in the last calendar year, down nearly 50% from late summer 2025.
Quality stocks trading near their 52-week lows:
PepsiCo $PEP: -19%
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Netflix $NFLX: -48%
Copart $CPRT: -56% pic.twitter.com/D7U2ENpAqa— Patient Investor (@patientinvestor) July 18, 2026
Plenty of explanations have been thrown out. One that seems pretty common is that Netflix is no longer the premium product it used to be. Stranger Things is over. There’s no must-see show in the lineup anymore. The original movies are largely ignored and consumers are looking elsewhere for content. There are too many options and too many subscriptions to pay for. Netflix is just getting lost in a way it never used to before every studio launched a competing product.
When it comes to sports, Netflix is the subject of more complaints than praise. Just look at the way it has covered Major League Baseball. Both the season-opening game in San Francisco and last week’s Home Run Derby were poo pooed as being more about what you can watch on Netflix instead of baseball. That’s bound to happen when a company is married to the idea that it doesn’t want to be in the sports business, but instead wants to turn games into events. Maybe casual viewers like it, but the sports’ biggest fans will be the loudest critics and they will be relentless.
The World Cup is an antidote for these problems. Eighty of the tournament’s 104 games in 2026 were in their own window. They are stand alone events, which is exactly what Netflix wants. The viewership data shows that people are seeking out these games even if they have not thought about soccer once in the last four years. Even the drama in the studio is creating conversation and viral moments.
“Alexi Lalas left us.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic: “America, you’re welcome.”— USMNT Only (@usmntonly) June 19, 2026
Now, Netflix’s stock price and the criticism it currently faces doesn’t do a total 180 just by adding the World Cup. If FIFA keeps the field at 48 teams, then the tournament is only 39 days of content every four years. Obviously, there would still be a lot of work to do. But the World Cup does answer every complaint currently being levied at Netflix.
It was more than a little shady the last time FIFA took U.S. World Cup broadcast rights to market, so maybe this will play out in a similar way, but fifteen years have passed since that bidding process. Not only are more companies involved with sports right now, but all of them are paying more money.
Sepp Blatter was a corrupt man that put enriching himself and his fellow FIFA officials above everything else, but he wasn’t very strategic about it. If his successor, Gianni Infantino, is smart, he won’t give anyone inside information. He will sit back and let the price climb higher and higher as all of these companies fight it out, and if he does that soon, no one has more motivation to keep bidding than Netflix.
About Demetri Ravanos
Demetri Ravanos is a writer and broadcaster living in Raleigh, NC. He is also the host of This Team is Killing Us, a podcast about the Carolina Panthers.