Soccer's governing body FIFA has begun the process of finding media rights partners in Germany for its next three World Cups – two men's and one women’s.
FIFA launched two tenders – one covering the 2026 and 2030 men's World Cups, and the other for the 2027 Women’s World Cup – earlier this week.
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The deadline for submission of bids across both tenders is February 13 at 10 am Central European Time, and interested entities can request the Invitation to Tender documents by contacting germany-media-rights@fifa.org.
The 2026 World Cup will be held across Mexico, the US, and Canada, while the 2030 edition will be split primarily between Spain, Morocco, and Portugal, with a trio of games also taking place in South America (one each in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina). The 2027 women's tournament, meanwhile, will be staged entirely in Brazil.
The 2026 men's tournament will be the first edition of the World Cup to feature as many as 48 teams and 104 matches.
The previous men’s World Cup, the 2022 edition in Qatar, was shown in Germany by a combination of public-service free-to-air (FTA) broadcasters ARD and ZDF, as well as the over-the top streaming MagentaTV service run by Deutsche Telekom. The latter platform showed all 64 games from Qatar, 16 of them exclusively, through a deal struck in March 2021. Qatar 2022 saw the German national team exit at the group stage for the second successive tournament.
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By GlobalDataEarlier this week, ZDF director-general Norbert Himmler stated that the two public-service broadcasters will not be able to acquire full 2026 and 2030 live rights on their own. He told German media that because of the substantial increase in games (and the subsequent increase in the fees FIFA will be hoping to extract) in the upcoming tournaments, as opposed to the Qatar World Cup, they will only be able to do it "with other partners in Germany."
This comes with global streaming giant Netflix and sports subscription service DAZN reportedly being considered as other options in terms of German media rights partners.
However, German law dictates that no matter who buys the rights, all of Germany's World Cup games, as well as the tournament's opening match, both semi-finals, and the final, must be shown live on FTA.
GlobalData Sport reported the value of the ARD and ZDF deal covering the 2022 tournament at around $292 million.
The previous Women's World Cup (Australia and New Zealand in 2023), meanwhile, was also shown live by ARD and ZDF, while highlights were snapped up by DAZN. Germany failed to make it out of the group stages at that tournament, in what was a sizeable shock.
In terms of recent World Cup rights deals, mid-December saw the UK’s BBC and ITV retain rights to the 2026 and 2030 editions of the men's tournament.
Russia's Match TV has also recently unveiled rights, for the 2026 edition.
For the 2027 Women’s World Cup, meanwhile, global streaming giant Netflix has secured exclusive rights in the US, as well as the subsequent iteration in 2031.
A rights tender process also took place in host nation Brazil across November and December.
