With time running out and most broadcasters walking away, FIFA (International Football Federation) announced on Wednesday (4) that it has finally managed to secure a broadcast partner for its inaugural 32-team Club World Cup in the United States at next year.
The announcement of a global deal with London-based streaming company Dazn came just a day before FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who has championed the event, will preside over the draw for the month-long tournament.
While financial details of the deal have not been publicly announced, Dazn is paying about $1 billion, according to two people familiar with the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss financial issues. Dazn has also secured an option for future rights to the event. In recent weeks, FIFA has informed teams and other officials that it expects to raise US$800 million (R$4.8 billion) in television rights fees, part of the roughly US$2 billion (R$12 billion) it expects that the event generated, a value that most market professionals considered unrealistic.
FIFA initially attempted to secure a $1 billion global deal with Apple before the technology company walked away, believing that the entity’s demands, which had already been halved from Infantino’s previous estimates, were too much. high.
Dazn, a sports media company owned by Ukrainian-born, Russian-raised British billionaire Len Blavatnik, has been expanding its presence in football. The company secured broadcasting rights for major leagues and competitions across Europe and beyond, although it lost considerable amounts of money along the way. Blavatnik has invested more than US$5 billion (R$30.3 billion) since starting Dazn in 2016, and has recorded billions of dollars in losses since then.
The company has gone through several business strategies and CEOs. More recently, it partnered with Saudi Arabia as the kingdom emerged as one of the biggest investors in global sports. Dazn has become the go-to destination for owners of Saudi sporting events including tennis, boxing and football, raising speculation that the partnership could soon lead to direct Saudi investment in the company as the kingdom seeks to build its own network sports. FIFA will award the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia next week.
“This groundbreaking agreement with FIFA is an important milestone in Dazn’s journey to be the definitive entertainment platform for sports fans around the world,” said Shay Segev, CEO of the company.
Dazn and FIFA said the Club World Cup matches will be broadcast free of charge and that the rights can be sublicensed to broadcasters around the world. The deal highlights FIFA’s need to raise not just money but also interest for an event that has never been held before.
“Through this broadcast deal, billions of football fans around the world can now watch what will be the most accessible club tournament ever — and for free,” Infantino said in a statement shared with Dazn.
FIFA’s president wants the quadrennial tournament to become one of the most watched sporting events, perhaps even one day equaling the popularity of the men’s World Cup, which is contested by nations rather than professional teams — even though they feature many of the same players cutting edge. To achieve this, he managed to guarantee the presence of 12 European teams for the event, which he promoted as the most meritocratic tournament in football. Despite this claim, FIFA found a place for Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami team, which was eliminated from the Major League Soccer playoffs in the opening round. To attract these big names — including Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Bayern Munich — Infantino will have to offer cash prizes that ensure teams take the event seriously, meaning the cost of holding it could exceed $1. billion.
European clubs, home to most of the world’s best talent, held several meetings with FIFA last year but received little clarity on prize money. For Infantino, the tournament offers a chance to move football’s financial and audience centers away from Europe. He believes the event could one day allow clubs from other regions to share some of the profits and interest in the sport and fulfill his vision of making football “truly global”.
The road to putting the tournament into practice has been bumpy. Efforts to sell it quickly and quietly to a Japanese conglomerate, backed by money from the Persian Gulf, failed in 2018. Then a plan to host the first edition of the event in China in 2021 was thwarted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Host cities and stadiums were only recently announced, along with the first sponsors. But it was the sale of media rights that made the most negative headlines, with the failure to secure a deal with Apple leading to a truncated, last-minute bidding process in which Europe’s major broadcasters either failed to bid or did low offers. Fox, a long-time partner of FIFA and a broadcaster for the 2026 World Cup in North America, reportedly offered just US$10 million (R$60.5 million) for the rights.
FIFA’s former commercial director, Simon Thomas, told The New York Times last week that the organization would “need to be creative” to meet its financial goals.
It is not yet clear whether the agreement with Dazn, which also guaranteed rights to FIFA’s archive and digital platform, will allow this to happen.
