FIFA wants initial bids for the 2030 and 2034 men’s World Cups by 19 November, and the governing body intends to pick its US broadcast partner before the end of the year.
That timing gives Fox the shortest possible runway to put its newly enlarged streaming empire to work. The company closed its $22 billion acquisition of Roku on 6 November, roughly six months after announcing the deal and well ahead of a projected first-half 2027 completion. Roku shareholders received $95.30 in cash and 0.9799 Fox Class A shares per Roku share. Fox shareholders hold 74% of the combined company, with former Roku shareholders holding the remaining 26%.
Roku co-founder Anthony Wood joins the Fox board and becomes co-chair of a new division, Fox Digital Platforms, which pulls Roku, the free streaming service Tubi and the paid Fox One service under one roof. Fox has guided analysts toward roughly $400 million in annual run-rate cost savings within two years.
Murdoch wants “disciplined” bids
The question is how hard Fox will push to keep an asset that just drove its best quarter in years.
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On the company’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call on 2 November, Lachlan Murdoch set the tone, telling analysts that Fox is “looking at the rights for [the] 2030 and 2034 [World Cups] in a disciplined manner, as we would with all sports rights,” according to Front Office Sports.
The 2026 tournament helped drive a 22% year-on-year jump in Fox’s fiscal first-quarter revenue to $4.57 billion. The Argentina-Spain final on 19 July averaged 42.5 million viewers on Fox Sports, making it the most-watched US broadcast since February’s Super Bowl LX.
Netflix and ESPN enter the auction
Fox is not the only name on FIFA’s list. According to Yahoo Sports, Netflix is expected to be heavily involved, it already holds rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cups and recently secured the 2030 men’s tournament in Spain, while ESPN has said it is interested in bidding and Amazon Prime Video has indicated interest. YouTube and Apple could potentially kick the tires. NBC, which carried Spanish-language coverage through Telemundo in 2026, is also in the frame as an incumbent.
FIFA is trying to bundle the English- and Spanish-language US rights into a single package for 2030, after friction between Fox and NBCUniversal over audience overlap during the 2026 tournament. A buyer has to prove it can reach cable-only viewers as well as streamers, and that is where Roku changes the arithmetic for Fox: its platform sits inside more than 100 million households worldwide, spanning the Americas, Europe and Australia.
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Rival bidders bring their own leverage. Netflix has the global subscriber base FIFA’s commercial department wants pointed at its showpiece. YouTube and Amazon bring reach that traditional broadcasters cannot match on their own.
Initial bids are due to FIFA on 19 November, with a winner expected to be named before the end of 2026.
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