We're All Footballers Now

Some Observations Post The World Cup

Before the warm glow in the aftermath of the 2026 World Cup leaves us, only to be replaced by the hot, humid portion of summer and the peak of the annual hurricane season, let’s take a few moments to consider the total impact of the global football spectacle (aka Soccer here in the US)

The huge television audiences the matches drew to Fox, the English rights holder domestically, and Telemundo/Peacock, the Spanish rights holder, dominated TV viewing for the weeks of matches from June through the final match this past Sunday. (A belated congratulations to Spain and their 19-year-old phenom Lamine Yamal on winning the tournament.)

The final results of the ratings performance for this World Cup will likely be impressive enough to drive negotiations for the television rights for the 2030 tournament up by some eight times from the $485 million that Fox paid for the privilege of airing the 2026 matches. That will put the price tag in the $4 billion range, with the proceeds headed to FIFA's coffers.

We believe it’s safe to say the World Cup has now arrived as a major sports television event, right up there with the various championships, save for the pinnacle of America’s take on football, the NFL’s Super Bowl. For comparison, the World Cup final this past Sunday drew a domestic TV audience of about 36 million across both Fox and Telemundo, compared to the 125 million who watched the Super Bowl on NBC back in February.

All the impressive numbers aside, the other breakthrough of this World Cup was not only the matches but also the countless stories of players and fans from around the globe who came to North America to celebrate what legendary footballer Pele dubbed “the most beautiful game.”

Put another way, football made a huge dent in the news cycle for the past six weeks.

Which leads us back to considering the role that sports play in our daily diet of news and information. From the tongue-in-cheek drama of Scotland’s “Tartan Army” descending on greater Boston and unapologetically drinking it dry to the real-life global drama of the apparent interference by the US President to get a red-carded player of the US Men’s National Team reinstated before their crucial match with Belgium. The World Cup made headlines in the news sections of virtually all news media—and not just the sports sections.

Even on local television newscasts, the World Cup made its way into the rundown of the “A Block” regularly. (Even those insipid live shots from empty venues where watch parties were long over before the late newscasts began…)

The examination of the role Soccer has come to play in the US across all levels of play, from the rec leagues of young children to the fast-growing professional level of Major League Soccer, was on full display. It shouldn’t come as a great surprise to anyone paying attention. From the climbing audiences for those MLS matches, not to mention the nascent but impressive women’s league, the NWSL, to the delivery of the Premier League for NBC Universal or the “Golazo” portfolio of coverage on Paramount’s CBS and CBS Sports networks, soccer/football is now all over American television.

Let us not forget the contribution that AppleTV+ has made to the spread of football into the American consciousness. Its deal to carry MLS games was brilliantly paired to the arrival of its hit comedy series “Ted Lasso,” which happens to be returning next month with a new season. And for our money, AppleTV’s podcast “After The Whistle” with Rebecca Lowe and Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard on “Ted Lasso” and one of the show’s Executive Producers) was nothing less than “must-watch or listen” to every episode.

Their combined joy and agony over the performances of their respective national teams (England for Lowe and USA for Hunt) is the stuff that we think all local TV sportscasters should study. The idea is to capture what ABC’s Jim McKay once announced as “the human drama of athletic competition,” which encompasses not only those who play the games, but also those who witness and support them.

The scores, the stats, and the strategies of every sport matter far less than the storytelling about them does. This is how sports coverage earns its place in the local newscast rather than be the first thing to be cut when stations look to save a few bucks, supported by the old thinking that half the audience doesn’t care about sports—or they already get everything they want from the various platforms of ESPN or any of its countless competitors “on the dial.”

(Though admittedly we haven’t had dials on televisions since the days of “The Honeymooners” and Lucy.)

Nobody understood this better than Roone Arledge, who built ABC Sports and later ABC News on the same idea: coverage that was “up close and personal.” It’s why Jim McKay’s Wide World of Sports open didn’t stop at “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”—it landed on “the human drama of athletic competition.” The drama was always the point, not the scoreboard.

Our former colleague Todd Summers, the weekend sports anchor at WSPA-TV in Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville, has built a multiple-EMMY®-winning tradition out of covering the Super Bowl every year without using a second of the game’s actual highlights. It’s Arledge’s philosophy, still working, six decades later, within a local newscast.

That’s what the World Cup did for six weeks, and what soccer has been doing here in the United States in recent years—catching up to a truth the rest of the world already knew. It made you care about a sport you might not have known much about. It focused on the stories beyond the final scores.

As we said off the top, this is why after the past six weeks, we’re all footballers now.

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