Zac Kenworthy says Foxone will carry all 104 World Cup matches
Foxone will stream all 104 matches of the 2026 men’s World Cup as Fox Sports prepares what Zac Kenworthy called “the biggest production Fox Sports has ever put on in our company’s history.” The expanded tournament starts Thursday with 48 nations over a five-week span, and Fox is pushing more of that inventory onto its own digital platform while still keeping most games on broadcast TV.
Zac Kenworthy and Stage B
Two-thirds of the 104 matches will air on the Fox broadcast network, with the rest on FS1, while Fox One carries every game. Kenworthy said the production plan is built around Stage B in Los Angeles, where Fox has installed an LED, augmented-reality wall with 50 million pixels. “It’s going to allow us to delve in deeper to the matches, to talk about the game in different ways, present the game in different ways,” he said at a recent press day in New York.
The 50 million-pixel wall matters because Fox is treating the tournament as a live production test as much as a rights event. Its studio cameras will deliver the first World Cup in high-dynamic range, and Kenworthy said the look should be “rich,” “quite different” and “It’s not going to be oversaturated, but it’s going to feel real.”
Fox since 2015
Fox has aired the World Cup since 2015, and the numbers from 2022 explain why the company is leaning harder into distribution. Fox averaged 3.6 million viewers for each of the 32 matches it carried that year, and the final between Argentina and France drew a record 16.8 million viewers. The 2026 field will grow from 32 nations and 64 matches in 2022 to 48 nations and 104 matches, which gives Fox far more live inventory across broadcast, cable, streaming and free streaming outlets.
Telemundo is facing the same larger tournament with different guardrails. Joaquin Duro, its EVP of sports and head of streaming at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, said, “All of the folks that we have watching soccer, we do have ‘next play’ within Peacock, which is another very, very important feature.” Telemundo averaged 2.6 million viewers in 2022 and holds rights through 2030, so the network can keep building around the same event while Fox’s current deal runs out after this year’s tournament.
North America in 1994
The World Cup has not been played in North America since 1994, and the 2026 event will spread across 16 cities in the region. For viewers, the practical shift is simple: more matches will be easy to find on broadcast television, but Fox One now becomes the place that carries the full schedule. That setup gives Fox a cleaner way to push casual viewers toward streaming without abandoning the big, free-to-air games that still draw the largest audiences.
