{"id":717088,"date":"2026-06-21T09:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/717088\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T09:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:08:13","slug":"for-fox-televising-the-world-cup-is-like-having-two-nfl-seasons-in-a-single-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/717088\/","title":{"rendered":"For Fox, televising the World Cup is &#8220;like having two NFL seasons in a single year&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For Fox, the <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/fox\/fifa-officials-explored-rescinding-2026-world-cup-rights.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">$485 million<\/a> paid for the English-language World Cup broadcast rights in America may be the best investment the network has ever made.<\/p>\n<p>Ratings are up significantly, fueled by Nielsen\u2019s recent enhancement of audience numbers via more accurate out-of-home viewing metrics. In the end, as explained by Stephen Battaglio of the Los Angeles Times, Fox projects that 150 million will watch some portion of the World Cup coverage. That\u2019s close to the 170 million who watch Fox\u2019s NFL regular-season games.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor us, it\u2019s <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment-arts\/business\/story\/2026-06-18\/early-tv-ratings-for-2026-world-cup-set-records-for-fox-telemundo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">like having two NFL seasons in a single year<\/a>,\u201d Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill told Battaglio.<\/p>\n<p>The key has been capturing the extent to which people are gathering to watch World Cup matches in places other than their homes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor many years, the numbers were under-counted and what we\u2019re seeing now is a truer representation of the sports audience,\u201d Mulvihill told Battaglio. \u201cYou just cannot overstate what it means to us to be able to capture all that viewing that\u2019s happening at fan fests, in bars and at smaller watch parties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fox currently pays $2.25 billion per year for its NFL slate of games. The World Cup broadcast fee is 21.5 percent of that amount.<\/p>\n<p>So, yes, it\u2019s a very good deal for Fox. And there\u2019s a good chance that, the next time FIFA shops the rights, the price will be dramatically higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Fox, the $485 million paid for the English-language World Cup broadcast rights in America may be the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-717088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}