The Athletic has live coverage of Argentina vs Spain in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final.
In the wake of record-setting TV ratings during the 2026 World Cup, Telemundo has secured exclusive U.S. Spanish-language TV rights for all Union of European Football Associations men’s soccer competitions, including the highly popular Champions League.
The new deal will run three years, starting with the 2027-28 season, and will also include UEFA’s Europa League, Conference League and Super Cup. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Games will appear on Telemundo, the Peacock streaming platform, Universo and Telemundo’s free ad-supported streaming channel. Telemundo also has the U.S. Spanish-language rights to the Premier League, U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, Olympic soccer and Liga MX, including deals with Mexican clubs Chivas Guadalajara, FC Juarez and Tigres UANL.
“There are two major brands in world soccer: World Cup and Champions League,” Telemundo Enterprises chairman Luis Fernandez said to The Athletic. “After a truly memorable World Cup for Telemundo, if you ask what comes next, the answer is simple: Champions League. The greatest stars — including Mbappe, Lamine, Haaland, Dembele — have now signed on with Telemundo, and Telemundo will bring them to its audience.”
Featuring 36 of Europe’s top clubs from across its top domestic leagues, the Champions League is considered the most prestigious annual club tournament in world soccer. Its inventory includes the 36-team “league” phase, including four home and four away matches for each team to determine 1-to-36 placement; a 16-team secondary phase to determine the back half of the “knockout” round; and a 16-team bracket, featuring two legs per matchup, with each team hosting a game and the winner advancing on aggregate goals (or penalty kicks in the event of an aggregate draw).
Qualifying for the Champions League burnishes the brand value of any club, along with plenty of financial value. Just making the field entitles a team to more than $20 million. Teams get millions of dollars per win, and potentially tens of millions more based on their historical track record and market size, known as the “value pillar.” The total Champions League prize pool distributed in 2025-26 was a record $2.8 billion.
The 2026 Champions League was won for the second consecutive season by Paris Saint-Germain, which defeated Arsenal in the final on penalty kicks after a 1-1 draw. (PSG received nearly $160 million for winning the 2026 title, across performance and “value pillar” payments.) Club soccer in the U.S. hit a new TV audience peak with that final. English-language rights in the U.S. to the Champions League are currently held by CBS, with games airing on CBS, CBS Sports Network and Paramount+ streaming service. Airing on CBS, the final averaged a little more than 2 million viewers, making it the largest audience ever for a U.S. English-language club soccer match. Per Nielsen, the U.S. Spanish-language broadcast of the final, airing on Univision and TUDN, averaged 1.3 million viewers.
Telemundo’s signature moment during the 2026 World Cup was the round-of-16 match between Mexico and England, the most-watched soccer match in total audience in U.S. Spanish-language TV history. Argentina’s win over England on Wednesday had the biggest total audience for a Spanish-language World Cup semifinal ever broadcast in the U.S. (“Total audience” is slightly different than “average minute audience,” another standard TV metric that estimates the number of viewers in an average minute of the broadcast.) Sunday’s final between Spain and Argentina has the potential to surpass both.
Consistently strong ratings on Telemundo for the 2026 World Cup have affirmed strong U.S. TV viewer interest in Spanish-language telecasts of soccer, which accounts for a larger percentage of total U.S. viewing of this World Cup — the combination of English-language and Spanish-language platforms — than the previous three Cups. Combined with NBC’s Peacock streaming service carrying Telemundo’s network feed, Telemundo says it has averaged a total audience of 6 million viewers per match through the semifinals.
“The biggest story of this World Cup wasn’t just the ratings; it was what those ratings revealed about audiences,” NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde told The Athletic. “This World Cup showed that fans increasingly choose the broadcast that feels most authentic to the sport. They want passion, expertise and a viewing experience that reflects the culture of the game. Authenticity isn’t just an editorial choice anymore. It’s becoming one of the most important drivers of audience behavior, and that’s a lesson we’ll carry forward into everything we do.”
Fox has aired the English-language broadcasts of the 2026 World Cup in the U.S., setting its own all-time audience records for English-language broadcasts of World Cup matches and, in the case of the U.S. loss to Belgium in the last 16, any English-language U.S. soccer telecast ever.
FIFA has yet to strike a deal for U.S. Spanish-language or English-language TV rights for the 2030 World Cup. Coming off the record-setting audience numbers this summer, a wide range of media companies, including traditional broadcast networks and well-capitalized streaming companies, are expected to have interest. FIFA will choose whether to sell two separate packages or bundle them for a single buyer. The 2030 World Cup will be held across Spain, Portugal and Morocco (with opening matches slated for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay in a nod to the competition’s centennial anniversary).
“This World Cup has reinforced what we’ve believed for years: When soccer is presented with authenticity and passion, fans respond,” Conde said. “We’re proud that so many viewers — including millions who don’t primarily speak Spanish — chose Telemundo during this tournament. It has only strengthened our belief in the future of soccer in America. We’ll continue pursuing opportunities that allow us to serve fans, align with our long-term vision and make strategic and economic sense.”
The 2028 Champions League final — the first final of Telemundo’s three-year deal — will be held in Munich. Meanwhile, this week, Telemundo announced it had acquired the U.S. Spanish-language TV rights to the Bundesliga, Germany’s top soccer league, which announced multiple U.S. TV distribution deals.
