UPDATE: 12:45 PM: The Sports Business Daily is reporting that Fox will pay $450 million-$500 million for rights to the next two World Cups, and Telemundo will pay $600 million. If true, those are massive markups from the last U.S. rights deal in 2005, when ESPN paid $100 million and Univision $325 million.
PREVIOUS, 9:40 AM: Fox Sports has won the English-language rights to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 soccer World Cups in Russia and Qatar, respectively, and Telemundo has won Spanish-language rights, after bidding was held this week in Zurich. No financial details were disclosed, but an official announcement is expected sometime today or early next week, according to Sports Business Journal; the deal includes rights to the Women’s World Cup in 2015 and 2019.
It means current rights-holders ESPN and Univision — whose deal for the past two World Cups cost them a combined $425 million — lost out in the auction at FIFA headquarters, a surprising outcome that didn’t seem to be on anybody’s radar. ESPN, whose current deal includes the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, said this morning in a statement: “We made a disciplined bid that would have been both valuable to FIFA and profitable for our company, while continuing to grow our unprecedented coverage of the World Cup and Women’s World Cup events. We were aggressive while remaining prudent from a business perspective.” That language sounds pretty familiar: Fox rolled out similar words when it lost the recent Olympics TV-rights bidding to NBC. Both Fox and ESPN have been prominent networks offering soccer coverage in the U.S., where the sport’s popularity is solid but nowhere near as big as it is in Europe; both share rights to the States’ Major League Soccer games, and both show Fox has its Fox Soccer Channel cable network, which certainly will figure prominently in its World Cup plans.


That’s not the World Cup in your photo.
Yes it is moron.
That wasn’t the photo they used this morning – they changed it after my comment, moron.
ESPN executives should have fallen to the ground clutching their ankles like these players so often do. This sport is not fit for TV. Good for ESPN for wiping their hands clean.
It’s not stealing when the sport is soccer…
Seriously? As if fox needed any more sports.
Yes, this is news in other countries, other languages, but not in Hollywood.
Football/Soccer is the biggest sport in the world and the World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the world. Based on sheer demographics, the audience for the sport in this country is an under served market. By WC 2018 and 2022 it will be more popular in the US than Baseball and Basketball, and might even challenge the viewership of the NFL. This is a huge get for Fox and an even bigger long term loss for TWWL.
well done fox the no1 sport in the world gets a gud american home u shud all take notice of wat real football is its played with feet not hands and isnt preceded with “american” no offence but it is about time u called the sport by its real name. Im not sayin american football is by the way.
Go Brazil. Fu ck 1950.
Shows that FOX is seriously becoming a viable network and besides, ESPN has purchased way too much as it is already so give someone else a chance to televize a special event such as this. Surprised telemundo got the rights to the WC after univision has been doing a solid job of it for almost 30 years now. Fox needs to get college football aired on their broadcasting channel now in the fall on Saturdays instead of it airing on FX, as it does now.
Wow. I wonder why Fox is spending all that cash on a sport no Americans watch. AT ALL. Boggles my mind.
Lots of Americans, even ones who are not of Hispanic origin, watch soccer. If nobody watched it, there wouldn’t have been more than 64,000 fans in Seattle for a game last week; or 25,000 in New Jersey last night. Many white Americans have progressed and matured from just watching the same old obese american football and baseball players who really don’t have a whole lot of talent and are grossly overpaid for what little work they do
I would suspect that FX and Fox Soccer Channel would divide-up most of the World Cup game, with games of Team U.S.A. and the championship game being on Fox’s over-the-air network.
Does anyone know why the Telemundo price was so high, and who their biggest rivals to get the spanish language right were?