Fox and Telemundo are opening their biggest World Cup plans yet on Thursday as the tournament begins in North America with 104 matches, 48 nations and a five-week schedule spread across 16 cities. For U.S. viewers, that means a flood of live soccer on broadcast television, streaming and shoulder programming from the first whistle.
The scale is the point. Two-thirds of the matches will air on Fox broadcast TV, the rest on FS1, and all 104 will be available on Fox One. Tubi will carry select live matches and related programming, while Telemundo will use games as lead-ins on both linear TV and streaming, with its coverage exclusive to Peacock. Joaquin Duro said Peacock’s “next play” feature is an important part of how viewers will watch soccer, calling it a key tool for fans who want to keep up with the action as it unfolds.
The World Cup group stage search interest is tied to the size of this event. FIFA nearly doubled the tournament from the 32-nation, 64-match edition in Qatar in 2022, and that gives media partners far more inventory to sell and schedule. Fox has carried the World Cup since 2015 and averaged 3.6 million viewers per match in 2022, with 16.8 million for Argentina’s win over France in the final. Telemundo averaged 2.6 million viewers that year and has rights through 2030.
That bigger format is a gift to broadcasters, but it has not won universal praise. More games and more time slots create more chances to keep viewers engaged, yet they also raise the risk that the tournament feels stretched compared with the tighter 2022 version. Fox Sports executive Zac Kenworthy called this the biggest production in the company’s history and said the expanded slate will let the network go deeper into matches and present the game in different ways without making the event feel oversaturated.
The first North American World Cup since 1994 starts Thursday, and the real test begins immediately: whether a 104-match schedule can hold attention across Fox, FS1, Fox One, Tubi and Peacock long enough to turn sheer volume into sustained ratings.
