24 The chatter that emerges whenever the quadrennial FIFA World Cup ends is increasingly familiar, with high-flying proclamations of ever-increasing numbers of viewers recorded in the billions, new sponsorship revenue records, and in North American media, the inevitable comparison: how does the World Cup compare with the American Super Bowl? The comparison has become more interesting than a simple argument about which event attracts the larger audience, as under the presidency of Gianni Infantino, FIFA, which organizes the World Cup, has increasingly sought to turn the competition’s audience into the fuel for a commercial machine that could become the world’s most successful sports businesses, with the most recent post-World Cup developments leading to extraordinary headlines even by FIFA’s bombastic standards (given how the organization has been no stranger to scandal and criticism throughout its existence). In July, immediately after the conclusion of the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, leaks revealed that FIFA was developing plans for a new commercial subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise, which would consolidate FIFA’s commercial and event operations (including broadcasting, sponsorship, ticketing and licensing) and which would raise as much as $4.2 billion from outside investors at an initial valuation of $20 billion. Following the leaks, FIFA insisted that it would retain control of football’s governance and sporting decisions even with the entry of private investors, and that proceeds from this new vehicle would ultimately be reinvested in football development. In spite of these reassurances, FIFA soon announced the plan was being scrapped in the face of overwhelming opposition. What the episode illuminates more than anything else is how FIFA is sitting on one of the most powerful media properties in the world, and it is increasingly asking what that property might be worth if it were managed less like a governing institution and more like a global sports business. The raw numbers prove that FIFA’s claims of global scale and value are more than justified. The entire 2026 World Cup Championship broadcast, per FIFA’s estimates (which can certainly be debated), affirm that more than six billion people had engaged with the 2026 tournament worldwide, while the final itself produced a combined U.S. television audience of 62.8 million across the FOX (in English) and Telemundo (in Spanish) TV networks. However, in terms of viewership in the U.S., these numbers are still inferior to the Super Bowl, with Super Bowl LX in February of 2026 averaging 124.9 million viewers in the U.S. When audience is translated into commercial value, FIFA’s 2026 budget projected $3.925 billion in television-rights revenue, most of which would come from the World Cup. Considering other sources of revenue, such as marketing rights, S&P Global has independently estimated that the World Cup tournament would generate roughly $9 billion for FIFA in 2026. In the U.S., FOX reportedly paid approximately $485 million for the English-language U.S. rights to the 2026 World Cup tournament, while advertising-industry data indicates that FOX generated roughly $835 million in World Cup advertising sales. Meanwhile, FOX coupled with Telemundo (which in turn secured the Spanish-language rights) attracted approximately $1.03 billion in U.S. advertising spend. While the World Cup revenue numbers are massive, they nonetheless significantly trail behind the Super Bowl, which is bundled into massive multi-year media packages that require networks to pay billions of dollars annually for regular-season and playoff games. The National [American] Football League (NFL) domestic media rights deals running from 2023 through 2033 are valued at roughly $110 billion in total, with four main broadcast partners paying billions of dollars each to secure a four-way yearly Super Bowl rotation. If FIFA wants to understand how much commercial value can be extracted from elite sports, the NFL is perhaps the most logical benchmark available because it is undeniable that the NFL has successfully transformed its sport into the world’s most valuable media business. The league generated an estimated $14.5 billion in national revenue in 2025, summing together media rights, sponsorships, licensing and other centrally negotiated commercial arrangements. FIFA, by contrast, is simultaneously a sports governing body, a competition organizer, a commercial rights holder, and a development organization representing 211 national associations with radically different levels of wealth, sporting infrastructure, and political influence. Thus, the FIFA World Cup, operationally, is much more akin to what a North American audience would recognize as an “all-star tournament,” with national teams made up of players who otherwise spend the vast majority of their time plying their trade at one of the innumerable clubs around the world. Every club, national federation, and regional governing body operates with its own set of ambitions and expectations, which might include the expectations to see World Cup revenues redistributed back into the global game, as well as strong opinions on how those revenues should be generated. This is where any comparison with the NFL breaks down, in that the NFL is a league of privately owned franchises operating within a highly developed commercial and legal framework. FIFA is not even, strictly speaking, a sports league. The World Cup belongs, in a complicated institutional sense, to the global football ecosystem where individual clubs develop the players, national associations assemble their teams, and confederations organize the regional tournaments as well as the qualification criteria. On top of that, host countries provide the physical infrastructure. FIFA sits above all of these intersecting participants, organizing the competition and distributing its proceeds. By Yuri Serafini The World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the Search for Endless Revenue Growth The National Football League (NFL) domestic media rights deals running from 2023 through 2033 are valued at roughly $110 billion in total. VIDEOAGE October 2026 Sports Finances
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