With the tournament just months away, FIFA has finally found a U.S. network to air its newly expanded men’s Club World Cup.
TNT Sports will air 24 of the expanded tournament’s 63 matches this summer.
In December, FIFA announced a deal with DAZN to stream all games for free in an agreement reportedly worth $1 billion. DAZN, based in London, has carried top soccer matches in Europe including Champions League games, but is more known in the U.S. for boxing. FIFA had struggled to get broadcasters interested in the tournament; Apple had been interested in getting the rights, but those talks fell through. The New York Times had reported last April that the Apple deal was for roughly a billion dollars before it collapsed.
Now TNT will air top matches in the group and knockout stages and the final across TNT, TBS, and truTV thanks to a deal with DAZN. Fans can expect TNT to air matches of teams U.S. fans will know best, like Inter Miami and Paris Saint-Germain, a spokesperson told Front Office Sports. DAZN will still carry all 63 games for free globally.
The tournament kicks off June 14 in Miami and runs through the final in New Jersey on July 13.
TNT Sports will squeeze the Club World Cup into a busy summer schedule. It’s Warner Bros. Discovery’s year to carry the Stanley Cup Final in an every-other-year rotation with Disney, plus the French Open, NASCAR, and MLB will all air on TNT this summer. TNT Sports has been expanding its portfolio in the last year, adding college football, college basketball, and Unrivaled, as it lost its longstanding package of NBA games.
“Partnering with DAZN to present the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 further bolsters our sports portfolio this summer and brings another world-class event to our TNT Sports portfolio,” TNT Sports chairman and CEO Luis Silberwasser said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to this new partnership with DAZN as we collectively deliver this exciting new global soccer club competition in the US this summer.”
The Club World Cup is expanding from 7 to 32 teams this year, and the new format has been controversial from the start. FIFA is growing both its club and domestic tournaments at the same time as more and more star players are criticizing the overloaded calendar or taking time off (and the UEFA Champions League has expanded, too). The global players’ union FIFPro Leagues filed a complaint against FIFA last year arguing the global governing body violates EU competition law. In October, LaLiga president Javier Tebas called on FIFA to cancel the tournament altogether, citing the then-lack of media deals.
