Marine’s comment is the first public confirmation from Amazon that Prime Video wants a seat at the table for the 2030 and 2034 tournaments. It stops well short of a bid, but it puts the company alongside Netflix, Apple, YouTube and Disney’s ESPN as challengers to the incumbents.
Those incumbents are Fox Sports, which holds English-language rights, and NBCUniversal’s Telemundo, which holds Spanish-language rights. Fox is seeking to retain them and has told Sports Business Journal it “absolutely” wants to bid on 2030.
What Prime Video would be buying
The 2030 tournament will be co-hosted by Morocco, Spain and Portugal, with centenary matches also staged in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The 2034 edition goes to Saudi Arabia. FIFA is planning to bundle US rights to both, and executives close to the process expect an opening ask of around $1 billion for a single cycle, with a combined package for both tournaments potentially reaching the $3 billion range, according to Front Office Sports.
That is a steep climb from the deal Fox is closing out. Fox reportedly paid around $485 million for English-language rights to the 2026 men’s World Cup alone, after earlier picking up 2018 and 2022 in a separate agreement.
Prime Video’s growing sports shelf
The World Cup pitch fits a strategy Marine has been describing for months. On The Main Event podcast, he said Amazon wants “top, premier sports in every major Prime country” it operates in, as reported by Sports Media Watch.
Prime Video already carries NFL Thursday Night Football, has just completed the first season of its 11-year NBA rights deal, and streams a slate of NASCAR Cup Series races, NWSL Friday night matches and UEFA Champions League fixtures in the UK. What it has not yet done is stage a single-event tournament with the scale of a men’s World Cup, and that thin production track record is the argument every rival will make against it.
A crowded field of streamers and networks
ESPN wants the World Cup back on its channels after two decades of holding the US rights before Fox took over. Chairman Jimmy Pitaro told the CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit in New York on 16 July: “We had the World Cup for two decades and it was a big part of ESPN’s identity and DNA.”
Netflix is the other streamer on the shortlist. It has already secured exclusive US rights to the 2027 and 2031 women’s World Cups. YouTube, Apple TV and Paramount are also expected to be in the mix.
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FIFA is expected to open formal negotiations later this year. The 2026 tournament, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States, ended on 19 July when Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in extra time at MetLife Stadium, with Ferran Torres scoring in the 106th minute.
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