Netflix has secured the media rights to broadcast the 2027 and 2031 editions of the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup in the USA, the streaming platform and FIFA introduced on Friday. The deal marks the primary time that media rights to the Ladies’s World Cup have been offered individually from the Males’s World Cup.
The deal is inclusive of media rights in all languages within the U.S. and consists of Puerto Rico.
For FIFA, the deal is a marked shift away from conventional broadcasting. Fox held the U.S. English-language media rights to the previous three editions of the Ladies’s World Cup and aired the video games on a mixture of broadcast and cable.
Along with stay protection of the tournaments, FIFA mentioned Netflix will produce “unique documentary collection within the lead-up” to each occasions, and “star-studded studio exhibits.”
“This can be a landmark second for sports activities media rights,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino mentioned in a press release. “As a marquee model and FIFA’s new long-term companion, Netflix has proven a really sturdy degree of dedication to rising ladies’s soccer. This settlement sends a powerful message about the actual worth of the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup and the worldwide ladies’s recreation. FIFA and Netflix partnering collectively makes this a really historic day for broadcasting and for girls’s soccer.
“Moreover broadcasting the tournaments themselves, Netflix will play a key function when it comes to bringing the fascination of ladies’s soccer to a multimillion viewers within the lead-up to each ultimate tournaments, thereby enabling us to additional improve their enchantment.”
Brazil will host the 2027 Ladies’s World Cup from June 24 to July 25 that 12 months. The host for the 2031 Ladies’s World Cup is anticipated to be chosen within the second quarter of 2025. The U.S. and Mexico have publicly said that they’ll bid on the occasion.
Infantino has been vocal about equalizing prize cash between the Males’s and Ladies’s World Cups, and he has beforehand been crucial of broadcasters’ unwillingness to pay extra for the ladies’s occasion — the latter being an necessary trigger in producing the previous as an impact.
He has additionally publicly hinted on the concept of increasing the Ladies’s World Cup to 48 groups in 2031.
The settlement for the 2027 and 2031 World Cups can also be historic for Netflix: The Ladies’s World Cup is the primary sports activities competitors that the platform has acquired in its entirety for livestreaming.
“I’ve seen the fandom for the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup develop tremendously — from the electrical environment in France in 2019 to, most not too long ago, the unimaginable vitality we noticed throughout Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand final 12 months,” mentioned Netflix chief content material officer Bela Bajaria in a press release. “Bringing this iconic match to Netflix isn’t nearly streaming matches, it’s additionally about celebrating the gamers, the tradition and the eagerness driving the worldwide rise of ladies’s sport.”
Netflix turned well-known over the previous decade for streaming leisure and has dabbled into sports activities in recent times. Its “Drive to Survive” docuseries on System 1 racing is amongst its most well-known sports activities endeavors, however the firm has not too long ago begun dabbling in stay sports activities.
Final month, Netflix aired a stay boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. Netflix mentioned the struggle attracted 108 million viewers globally, though these numbers should not independently verified. In actual time, the struggle was marred by technical difficulties, together with buffering.
Netflix will air two stay NFL video games subsequent week on Christmas Day.
These current strikes mark a dramatic shift in positioning for the corporate after co-CEO Ted Sarandos beforehand mentioned the corporate was thinking about “the drama of sports activities,” however not the stay product.
Present costs for Netflix within the U.S. vary from $6.99 per thirty days with adverts and different limitations, to $22.99 per thirty days for the premium subscription with out adverts.
The final three Ladies’s World Cup finals have been broadcast on Fox, a free, over-the-air channel.
