Sports media predictions for 2026: World Cup, Olympics and pundit Aaron Rodgers
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Richard Deitsch
What should viewers expect in sports media in 2026? For starters, a massive audience for the World Cup next summer.
Having lived in both Buffalo and Toronto, a pair of cities separated by 100 miles but bonded by recurring sports heartbreak, I have a Ph.D. in predictions gone awry. I was certain the Toronto Blue Jays were going to win the World Series after Game 5 — I can still see Daulton Varsho’s final at-bat of 2025 in my sleep — and you know how that turned out. Had I been charged by this publication to predict the Super Bowl participants over the last five years, my AFC choice would have been incorrect each time.
It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future, as Yogi Berra famously noted, but there are some things in sports media that are not difficult to see. In my 2025 predictions column, it had some hits, some misses — and one very big flop. We noted trends that looked obvious (increased investment in women’s sports media, legacy media consolidation and layoffs, Netflix becoming a bigger sports player), and all of those held up. Those trends will continue in the upcoming year, as will Netflix and YouTube continuing to charge into live sports.
Here are some thoughts on 2026, as I go much more conservative on prognostications:
1. The 2026 World Cup will be the most-watched World Cup in U.S. television history
This prediction might feel like Matt Le Tissier taking penalties — fairly automatic. But it is important to highlight the context. Everything is set up for Fox to have a massive audience for the summer soccer fiesta.
• The event is being held in North America, so the time zones are perfect for U.S. television.
• The U.S. men’s national team got a great draw and should likely make its way to the knockout round, which sets up at least one massively viewed game before the final.
• The event is going to be politicized to the hilt, and that is going to produce people who never watch soccer to check out what all the fuss is about.
• Plus, we are in a world of Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurement, and the out-of-home viewing (bars, restaurants, hotels, airports) will be off the charts.
Fox drew 17.7 million viewers for Argentina’s thrilling win over France in the final four years ago from Qatar, the most-watched men’s World Cup final in the history of U.S. television. I expect this year’s final will top it no matter the teams.
I’ll also predict the decade-old, record group-stage match (U.S.-Portugal on ESPN in 2014, which drew 18.2 million viewers) will be topped at some point during the tournament.
The complete World Cup on Fox and FS1 (64 matches) four years ago averaged 3.59 million viewers. The record for the World Cup as far as viewership average per game is 4.56 million viewers for all of ESPN’s match coverage from Brazil in 2014.
2. But the record World Cup viewership will not lead to increased soccer viewership in the U.S. for the long term
As successful as I think the 2026 World Cup will be as a television property, I think the American public will see it more as a one-off than something that leads to increased viewership of MLS and global soccer. But, as a fan of the sport, I am rooting to be wrong.
3. The NFL will announce an international package of games by the end of 2026. It lands with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or YouTube
The NFL’s global ambitions are enormous, and proof of concept regarding the interest in those games now exists to the point where the league can set up an interesting package of international games. It’s a matter of when (not if) the NFL goes to market for such rights.
The odds-on bet is 2027, but we will gamble and say the news comes out at the end of 2026. “We are very pleased with the viewership numbers for all of our international games this season,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, recently told The Athletic. “We certainly had high expectations entering the season given the great matchups and the excitement of entering new markets in Dublin, Madrid and Berlin, and I believe we surpassed those expectations with how we started the year in São Paulo, Brazil – over 19 million viewers worldwide on YouTube – and with the record-setting viewership for the games on NFL Network.”
Who gets the initial NFL global package? Put me down for Amazon Prime Video.
4. Women’s sports podcasts will explode in 2026
SBJ’s Rachel Axon recently wrote a long feature on women’s sports podcasts and had a stat that blew me away: SBJ compiled a list of more than 80 women’s sports shows in the space and nearly 72 percent of those had only launched since the start of 2024.
As far as significant financial investment, we’re still in the early stages, so the potential growth for this market seems massive, especially if female sports fans let it be known that their spending dollars will support the sponsors.
You will obviously see an expansion of female athlete-hosted podcasts, but I also expect more content creators to produce daily women’s sports audio content — and get it monetized. Closer to home: The Athletic has seen explosive growth in listenership for “No Offseason: The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show.”
5. The Olympics keeps its groove going
Before the Paris Games in 2024, Olympic viewership had tumbled significantly in recent cycles. The COVID-adjusted Tokyo Olympics in 2021 averaged 15.6 million viewers per night across NBC’s various television and digital platforms. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics averaged 11.4 million across all platforms, the least-watched Olympics in the modern era. It was a sharp decline from the 19.8 million average for the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.
But the Olympics bloomed again in France’s capital, as NBC Universal posted a 16-day total audience delivery average of 30.6 million viewers across the combined live Paris Prime (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. prime time (8-11 p.m. ET/PT). I think we will see a carryover for the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February.
Sports remain one of the few parts of American culture that have successful communal viewing, and I think Americans are going to enjoy two-plus weeks of escaping.
The Winter Olympics traditionally draw far fewer viewers than the Summer Games, and that will be the case again with Milan-Cortina. But look for the Games in Italy to be closer to what we saw in South Korea eight years ago than the lows of Beijing.
6. Aaron Rodgers will have a role in sports broadcasting next season
My longest shot on the board. Two years ago, I spoke to NFL broadcasters and producers about the prospect of Rodgers as an NFL broadcaster, should he ever pursue the profession. All of them said he was one of the most cerebral subjects they had come across in production meetings. To be clear, Rodgers has expressed no public interest recently in wanting to be a broadcaster, but sports media is filled with people (e.g. Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Bob Knight) you would have never expected during their playing or coaching career to end up part of broader media. I’m using “sports broadcasting” rather than NFL broadcasting because a permanent fixture on a show such as “The Pat McAfee Show” might be a better fit for Rodgers than a game or studio assignment.
7. NBC’s MLB coverage will be a hit
It’s a massive upcoming year for NBC, especially come February when in a short span the company will air the Super Bowl, the Milan-Cortina Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game.
Later in 2026, NBC/Peacock will become the new home of the first round of the MLB playoffs, “Sunday Night Baseball” (which will air on NBC, Peacock and NBCSN) and MLB’s Sunday Leadoff game (on Peacock). NBC will also have a presence during MLB All-Star Week as NBC and Peacock will present the first hour of the MLB Draft and NBC and Peacock also will present the Futures Game.
As we’ve seen over the first couple of months with its NBA coverage, the company has a good sense of how to make events feel big. It has eschewed hot-take television and the relentless negativity which made ESPN’s NBA Finals studio coverage impossible to watch. I see NBC going all-out to make MLB feel big in Year 1, and I think viewers will notice.
8. A sports broadcaster will lose his or her job over a political social media post
We are obviously heading for a tumultuous political year in America in 2026, given the midterm elections. Since social media remains a vital way for a sports content practitioner to promote work — and takes — it seems inevitable that lines will be crossed for some media employers.
9. The NFL in Australia will be a hit
The NFL announced earlier this year that the league will play its first game in Australia next season at the famed Melbourne Cricket Ground. The Los Angeles Rams are the designated home team, and John Ourand of Puck recently reported that the league is looking to strike a deal for the game with a global streamer.
Australia is a market the NFL really wants to succeed in, and the league has been working on expanding the NFL footprint in the region, including the opening of an NFL office on Australia’s Gold Coast in 2022 and launching the NFL Academy Asia-Pacific.
“Australia is a significant market for us, and we are excited to start our multiyear commitment to play games in Melbourne next season,” Schroeder told The Athletic. “We have been working on expanding the game of football in that region for the past few years.”
This has the feel of the perfect mix of sport and country, and the league is going to air the game at a time locally so that U.S. fans get it in prime time. If you want a guess: YouTube gets the Australia game.
10. The Toronto Blue Jays win the World Series in 2026
Alejandro Kirk singles home Bo Bichette in Game 7 to defeat the Dodgers.