Netflix Adds Women's World Cup Media Rights: From Football To Futbol, Streamer All-In On Live Sports

Streaming giant Netflix Inc NFLX landed the U.S. media rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women's World Cup adding to its recent push into live sports, set to be front and center with two NFL games on Christmas Day.

What Happened: For years, Netflix has been a streaming platform for sports documentaries that avoided live sporting content.

In recent years, the company dipped its toes in live content with comedy specials, a roast of Tom Brady and some one-off sporting events. Things escalated in 2024 with the live boxing event that featured Jake Paul and Mike Tyson.

Netflix is now adding one of the largest sporting events in the world to its library of live sports content announcing the "landmark media rights deal" for the 2027 and 2031 FIFA Women's World Cups rights for the U.S. and Puerto Rico across all languages.

Netflix will also produce an exclusive documentary series on women's soccer for both World Cups.

"I've seen the fandom for the FIFA Women's World Cup grow tremendously — from the electric atmosphere in France in 2019 to, most recently, the incredible energy we saw across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand last year," Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria said.

The 2027 Women's World Cup, which will be held in Brazil, takes place from June 24 through July 25 with 32 teams competing for the championship. The 2031 Women's World Cup host nation has not been decided yet.

Why It's Important: Netflix isn't new to soccer having made several documentaries about soccer teams and figures including David Beckham, Neymar, Boca Juniors and the "Under Pressure: The U.S. Women's World Cup Team" series on the 2023 U.S. Women's team.

The strategy of sports documentaries and one-off events appears to be escalating with new media rights deals.

"We're super excited about the success of our sports-adjacent programming," Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said last year.

Sarandos said at the time that Netflix didn't need to get into "live sports licensing" at the time.

"We aren't anti-sports, we're pro-profit," Sarandos said last January.

The Paul vs. Tyson boxing match may have really kick-started plans for more live sports with huge viewership figures and Sarandos recently saying Netflix may have left money on the table for advertising during the boxing match.

“If we knew the audience would be that big, we probably would have done a lot more selling on that fight," Sarandos said.

The NFL Christmas Day games have seen huge advertising demand and one analyst predicts that Netflix might make as much from advertising as it paid for the media rights, making it a free way to try and grab new subscribers.

Sarandos hinted recently at doing more "big-scale live events" and doing them more frequently. Whether this meant the Women's World Cup could remain a mystery.

For Netflix, live sports events offer a way to gain subscribers and diversify its content. The events also allow the company to grow its advertising revenue with the ad-supported plans a growing focus.

The U.S. Women's soccer team won World Cups in 1991, 1999, 2015 and 2019 and is one of the top countries in the tournament of all time. An early exit in the 2023 tournament saw the team go home in the knockout rounds with a loss to Sweden decided in penalty kicks after a 0-0 tie.

Despite the early exit, U.S. media rights partner Fox Corporation FOXFOXA saw strong viewership. A group stage matchup against the Netherlands had 6.4 million average viewers, setting new records for a group stage match as reported by Deadline.

The knockout game with Sweden, which aired at 5 a.m. ETT in the U.S. averaged 2.5 million viewers despite the early airing. The four U.S. games averaged 3.8 million viewers, up 2% from the 2019 Women's World Cup U.S. games, but with major time zone difficulties at play. The team's final group match aired at 3 a.m. ET and had 1.3 million viewers.

With the next Women's World Cup in Brazil, Netflix should benefit from time zones that make the matches more in-line with American viewership.

Fox currently has the U.S. media rights to the Men's World Cup through 2026, which could set the Men's World Cup up for an intense round of bidders soon. Fox has rights to several other major soccer tournaments and will likely push hard to retain the Men's World Cup, especially after losing the Women's tournaments to Netflix.

Netflix begins broadcasting WWE events in January as part of an agreement with the company’s owner TKO Group Holdings TKO. Sarandos said WWE fits into the mold of a younger audience and treats sporting contests like big events.

NFLX Price Action: Netflix stock trades at $911.70 on Friday versus a 52-week trading range of $461.86 to $941.75. Netflix stock is up 96% year-to-date in 2024.

Read Next: