Home › Soccer › FIFA › Netflix acquires Women’s World Cup in its biggest deal yet
(Netflix)
Less than a week before it makes its NFL debut, Netflix has reached a far more consequential deal — acquiring the next two editions of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
FIFA announced Friday that Netflix has acquired exclusive English and Spanish-language rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cup in the United States and Puerto Rico, by a wide margin the most consequential sports rights deal struck by the streamer. While the NFL is the most popular of sports properties in the United States, its deal with Netflix is for one day a year — Christmas.
Netflix had not been previously mentioned as a bidder, but John Ourand of Puck reported last week that FIFA had told bidders than an unidentified “non-traditional” company had submitted the largest bid. At the time, speculation centered on DAZN, which earlier this year acquired the FIFA Club World Cup.
Ourand also reported that FIFA was only willing to sell rights to said company “if, and only if” it sublicensed some matches to a traditional media company. There was no mention of a sublicensing agreement in the Netflix deal announcement Friday.
For Netflix, which revolutionized the video rental industry by sending DVDs through the mail, and then inaugurated the era of streaming, the FIFA deal is its first full entry into the sports rights marketplace. Its deal with the NFL has already generated outsized attention and it is for at most six Christmas Day games over three years.
Technically, the FIFA deal is still in keeping with the Netflix strategy of picking its spots and acquiring big one-off events. (It is also in keeping with the company’s historical aversion to advertising, as World Cup matches air commercial free.) However, a month-long competition every four years is still a far greater commitment than any the company has previously made, and makes it a clear contender for rights to the 2030 men’s World Cup and even the Olympic Games.
Rights to the Women’s World Cup were previously bundled with those of the men’s tournament. Both tournaments were acquired by Fox Sports and Telemundo in a deal that went into effect in 2015 and ends with the 2026 men’s tournament. Previously, the tournaments aired on ESPN and Univision.
Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter), Threads or Bluesky.
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Does these rights also include the 2026, 2030 and/or the 2034 men’s tournament bundled into this deal?
No they don’t.
I would expect at least a handful of matches to be sublicenced. Possibly the opening game, the final, and some early group stage games. This should be done to draw exposure that Netflix has the matches. But with enough cash, FIFA can always be swayed.
What company is possibly going to partner with Netflix in doing this matches? (Fox, or CBS, or ESPN/ABC?, or NBC?)
This is shocking. So, to confirm, there is fully exclusive? There is no linear partner in this deal. Do you think there any chance Netflix would lease out this to a linear partner (say for some team USA games)?
Depends — Ourand’s reporting indicated that the “non-traditional media company” we now know is Netflix was going to be required to sublicense rights. But that may not have been correct, or maybe Netflix was able to get FIFA to move off of that requirement.
NF lied about getting into live Sports, because at the time they didn’t know how to monetize it. More accurately they didn’t have the ads system yet in place.
I Said for years its only a matter of time and his “no live sports” bs was just that – Bull.
Now that they nabbed NFL other sports will be joining.
And BTW adding sports to a pay service is no different than HBO or Showtime doing it. Streaming is just a cable-independent premium channel.
But these streamers are being subsidized by phone and internet providers. When that well runs dry will be true test.
In the mean time, you see more sports going to NF and Prime the two non-legacy media companies in streaming.
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