Netflix wants a seat at the table for U.S. rights to the 2030 and 2034 men’s World Cups, Bela Bajaria told the FT Business of Entertainment conference. FIFA has begun preliminary discussions, with Disney/ESPN, YouTube and Fox among those showing interest. Fox carried the 2026 tournament in the United States.
Bajaria pointed to the company’s existing FIFA deal as the bridge: Netflix holds U.S. and Canadian rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cups. She described a “great relationship” with FIFA and said the two sides are already talking. “We’re always going to be in the conversation with the leagues,” she added.
The bidding field
Disney and YouTube are already named as interested parties, and Amazon and Apple could also compete. The tournament’s recent Spanish-language rights sat with NBCUniversal’s Telemundo, but FIFA could package English and Spanish rights together going forward — a shift that would force buyers to value bilingual reach and ad load, not just one-language audiences.
A different scale of live event
Netflix has been selective about sports, but Bajaria said the platform wants events that feel “eventy.” The men’s World Cup is about as event-sized as it gets, with a global audience and a month of high-attention inventory. For a streamer running an advertising tier, that is a subscriber acquisition and retention lever as much as a rights cost.
- 2030: Morocco, Portugal and Spain, plus centenary games in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay
- 2034: Saudi Arabia
- Existing FIFA relationship: 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cup U.S. and Canada rights
- Possible bidders: Disney/ESPN, YouTube, Fox, Amazon, Apple
The next signal is whether formal bids emerge and how FIFA structures language rights. Netflix’s women’s tournament commitment now looks less like a one-off experiment and more like a test for a much larger men’s football push.
Source: Deadline
