The rivalry between ESPN and Fox Sports is moving from the football field to the soccer pitch.
ESPN and Fox are poised to battle it out for the billion dollar rights to the 2030 men’s FIFA World Cup in Morocco, Spain, and Portugal. But the two sports media giants will likely have company at the negotiating table.
Netflix holds the exclusive rights in the U.S. and Canada to the women’s 2027 and 2031 World Cups. After the raging success of this year’s World Cup, the streaming giant could try for a clean sweep.
Elle Duncan, host of Netflix’s global sports coverage, told FOS that “everything is on the table” for Netflix when it comes to acquiring more mega sporting events like the men’s World Cup.
“It’s the perfect type of sporting event that would interest Netflix,” she said. “Despite what someone may believe, Netflix isn’t laying around waiting for scraps from other legacy broadcasters who don’t want things any more. They are only going to these leagues like, ‘We want things that can be major, that feel special and that are different.’ And the World Cup is exactly like that.
“Netflix is famously global, 330 million households across the world. World Cup is a global event. It’s a special event that lasts for one month that captures everyone’s attention. It’s why they were so interested in getting the women’s World Cup.”
Meanwhile, ESPN hosted six World Cups from 1994 to 2014. Inside Bristol, there’s still a strong belief that its coverage, led by legendary anchor Bob Ley, was some of the best work the four letters ever did.
After covering the 2026 ESPYS Awards on Wednesday, I reported that ESPN was ready to go all-out to win back the World Cup from Fox. On Thursday, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro confirmed it.
“We had the World Cup for two decades and it was a big part of ESPN’s identity and DNA,” Pitaro said during the CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit. .
ESPN is hyper competitive with its rivals when it comes to rights negotiations. Besides competing every year for the best NFL matchups, ESPN and Fox are the two biggest TV power players in college football. Still, Pitaro lavished praise on Fox Sports and its CEO, Eric Shanks, for their World Cup coverage.
“I’ve been very impressed with the way Fox has covered all this,” Pitaro added. “From a live game production perspective, from a studio perspective, they’ve done an outstanding job. I don’t know, honestly, how they could have done better with the product.”
Fox succeeded ESPN as the World Cup rights holder in 2018, having hosted each of the last three men’s tournaments. Ahead of Sunday’s final between Argentina and Spain, Fox told Richard Deitsch of Sports Business Journal that it “absolutely” wants to bid on the 2030 World Cup.
FIFA is expected to kick off formal negotiations later this year. Fox scored the last major steal in American sports when it scored English language media rights for the current men’s World Cup at the bargain basement price of $485 million. But with Fox pulling record TV ratings for the first World Cup on American soil in 32 years, it’s now a seller’s market.
Bidding for 2030 is expected to start at a 100 percent-plus price jump of $1 billion. Daniel Cohen, executive vice president of Octagon’s media advisory, believes FIFA may package English and Spanish language media rights together for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups at an eye-popping price of $3 billion.
Still, there’s nothing guaranteed. The time zones for the next two men’s World Cup will not be as advantageous for rights holders as this year’s tournament in North America has been. Bidders like ESPN and Fox could also have to make a choice between a quadrennial mega-event and NFL. The country’s richest, most popular sports league is poised to re-negotiate its current cycle of media deals worth $111 billion over 11 years with five U.S. media partners: ESPN, Fox, NBC, CBS and Amazon Prime Video.
Netflix boasts a separate four-year deal with the NFL to show five live games through the 2029-2030 season. Netflix’s 2026 NFL coverage will include the league’s first-ever game in Australia, a Week 1 matchup between the Rams and 49ers; a Thanksgiving Eve game between the Packers and Rams; and Christmas Day doubleheader featuring Bears-Packers and Bills-Broncos.
Factor in Paramount—which already has a strong soccer portfolio including the UEFA Champions League and has shown a willingness to spend under David Ellison—and the 2030 World Cup will have no shortage of suitors. This year’s tournament might be ending, but the race for the rights to the next one is about to heat up.
