Soccer’s global governing body FIFA has opened a media rights tender covering the next two men’s FIFA World Cups across nine European markets.
Rights covering the 2026 (the US, Canada, and Mexico), and 2030 (Spain, Portugal, and Morocco) tournaments went out to tender yesterday across Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, and Ukraine.
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The submission deadline for bids is March 25 at 11am Central European Time.
The 2026 event will involve a record 48 teams, including 16 from Europe, taking part in 104 matches. For the 2030 World Cup, while Spain, Portugal, and Morocco will host the vast majority of games, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay will host one each to mark 100 years since the inaugural World Cup in Uruguay.
Out of the countries covered by this tender, none managed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, or the 2018 edition in Russia.
In terms of broadcast deals for those territories covering the 2022 tournament, all were covered through a significant tie-up (covering 37 territories in total) between FIFA and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) umbrella organization of free-to-air broadcasters. This meant that, for the most part, the Qatar tournament was shown by the main public-service broadcasters across the nine countries.
Notable specific partners outside of that tie-up included Megogo in Ukraine.
The previous tender covering FIFA World Cup broadcast rights went live in Hong Kong in mid-January, with a submission deadline of February 25. That process covers rights for the 2026 tournament, as well as the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
A Spanish process for the 2026 and 2030 tournaments was also launched in January, and that tender closed yesterday.
Meanwhile, December saw the BBC and ITV retain men’s World Cup rights in the UK, while Netflix made waves by securing rights in the US to the 2027 and 2031 women’s tournaments.
