Netflix Signals It Wants In on Men's World Cup Rights as FIFA Talks Heat Up

Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria has publicly confirmed the streamer's interest in bidding for U.S. broadcast rights to the men's World Cup, putting Netflix in direct competition for a property that FIFA is only in preliminary talks to sell for the 2030 and 2034 tournaments, according to Deadline's reporting on comments Bajaria made this week.

The stakes are enormous. FIFA's talks are reportedly attracting interest from Disney, YouTube and Fox, the last of which aired this year's tournament held in the United States, per Deadline and corroborating coverage from Radio Times. That lines up a field of legacy broadcast power against tech-platform money in a bidding process that could determine how the world's single biggest live sporting event reaches American audiences for the better part of a decade.

Netflix is not walking into this cold. The company already holds U.S. and Canadian broadcast rights to the 2027 and 2031 FIFA Women's World Cups, giving it an existing relationship with FIFA and direct experience programming a major global soccer tournament before it ever bids on the men's event. That incumbency is likely to factor into how seriously FIFA treats Netflix's interest in the bigger prize.

Bajaria's comments carry a personal note that FIFA's commercial team will not miss: she grew up in North London, not far from Wembley, the site of England's 1966 World Cup triumph, according to Deadline. It is a small detail, but it signals a level of genuine enthusiasm from Netflix's content leadership rather than an opportunistic feeler, at a company that has been steadily building live-sports credibility through NFL Christmas Day games, WWE Raw, and boxing events.

For FIFA, running a competitive process among streamers and legacy broadcasters simultaneously is a deliberate strategy to maximize rights fees. The governing body has watched other properties — English Premier League packages, NBA rights, and Formula 1 — command escalating sums precisely because streaming platforms with balance sheets far larger than traditional broadcasters have been willing to bid aggressively to build subscriber bases around live events.

The men's World Cup rights fee is one of the largest single media-rights transactions in global sports, and a shift toward a streaming home would be the clearest signal yet that live sports' migration off linear television has reached its most valuable remaining holdout. Fox's incumbency and existing U.S. soccer relationships give it leverage, but Disney's ESPN and streaming ambitions, YouTube's live-sports push, and now Netflix's stated interest mean FIFA has real competitive tension to exploit.

For advertisers and sponsors, the outcome matters just as much as it does for FIFA's rights fee. A Netflix-won tournament would mean navigating an ad-supported tier that is still relatively new and unproven at this scale, compared with the established measurement and buying infrastructure that comes with a broadcast partner like Fox or Disney.

There is no indication a deal is imminent, and Netflix's involvement so far amounts to a public statement of interest rather than a confirmed bid, but the timing is notable: FIFA typically likes to lock in U.S. rights years ahead of the tournament to help finance planning, and the preliminary nature of these talks means the field could still shift dramatically before any formal process concludes.

Whichever way the men's World Cup rights ultimately land, the mere fact that Netflix is willing to say so publicly underscores how completely the competitive landscape for the biggest live sports properties has been reordered around streaming-first strategy in just a few years.