FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, has launched a series of tenders in the Philippines for media rights covering three major tournaments.
Invitations to tender have been made available for rights to men’s soccer’s 2026 World Cup national teams tournament in Mexico, the US, and Canada, and also to the 2027 Women’s World Cup (WWC) in Brazil. In addition, another process is covering the Fustal Women’s World Cup next year (for which the Philippines is the host nation).
Companies wishing to participate in the tender processes should contact philippines-media-rights@fifa.org, with a bid submission deadline of 10 am (European Central Time) on December 10.
Whereas rights were sold by Infront during the last major FIFA rights sales cycle in Southeast Asia, this time around the governing body is going direct to broadcasters, with Infront instead taking an advisory role.
This marks one of the final Asian tender processes for the 2026 World Cup. Elsewhere, today (November 19) marks the deadline for a rights tender for that tournament in Portugal.
For the 2027 WWC, meanwhile, FIFA launched a tender covering media rights to that tournament (the first to take place in South America) in the US - arguably women's soccer's largest market - earlier this month.
In the Philippines, the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar was shown live by Tap DMV, while the last edition of the WWC (2023, in Australia and New Zealand) was covered by pay-TV’s Cignal TV.
The 2023 tournament saw the Philippines make their debut at a WWC - the team failed to make it past the group stage, but did beat hosts New Zealand for their first-ever WWC win.
The country have never qualified for the men’s World Cup, meanwhile - and were knocked out of contention for the 2026 tournament at the second round of Asia-zone qualifying.
In terms of recently-announced World Cup media rights deals, late October saw the European Broadcast Union unveil rights to the 2026 and 2030 editions in four territories - Bulgaria, Czechia, Croatia, Hungary - and for just the 2026 tournament in Israel.
