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While the DOJ and Brendan Carr hem and haw about the NFL making fans buy Amazon Prime memberships, FIFA is charging $25,000 for soccer tickets

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When you’re a broadcaster, you’re a broadcaster all the way…

DAVID BLOOM: Hope you’re acclimating to the peculiar wonders of Las Vegas, Daniel. I settled into the full Vegas experience Sunday, registering for both NAB and the Adobe Summit, checking into the Venetian, and puzzling over why they put the closest monorail station to the convention center so far from hotels where people actually congregate. Some things will remain ever a mystery, but boy, I’ve gotten my steps in. I did catch two smart sessions at the Sports Theater, in the convention center’s northwestern-most corner, including one on the brain-melting numbers associated with televising the first FIFA World Cup hosted by three countries: the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Yes, the three countries’ teams are in the tournament, as are 45 other nations, with all their stories and cultures and, given this particular events sprawling nature, logistics.

They’ll be playing in 16 venues across North America, in four time zones, with all the game footage shipped live to a centralized FIFA broadcast hub in Dallas. From there, it will be output to Fox, Telemundo and more than 200 other video partners around the world for audiences that likely will range between 200 million and 300 million per game. Oh, and at least 1.5 billion people are likely to watch the finale. And the NFL thinks its Super Bowl is a big deal. ”We’re ready to go,” said Oscar Sanchez, FIFA’s head of host broadcast production. “FIFA has more than 200 broadcast partners so we need to ensure a standardized feed. Once the ‘steak’ is ready, we pass it to (Fox) or Telemundo and they decorate it however they want.” Fox Sports Kevin Callahan said having the games in Fox’s virtual backyard instead of, say, Russia or the Middle East, “makes everyone sit up and make sure you’re telling the best stories you can be.” I chatted after the session with Josh Arensberg, Verizon’s Global GM for Sports, Media & Technology and some of his key execs designing the private 5G fiber systems that will transport all that data, from all of those venues, as fast and reliably as possible to Dallas, with, shall we say, substantial levels of redundancy. None of the systems can be installed at stadiums before May 11, 30 days before the first matches, under FIFA contracts with the venues. To add further complexity, some stadiums such as New Jersey’s Meadowlands will require extended wireless networks outside the stadiums themselves as FIFA pushes would-be tailgaters out so they can run fan experiences, brand activations and the like in those surrounding lots. I think I knew this would be big (I attended a World Cup game at the Rose Bowl in 1994 with my then very young children). But in truth, I didn’t have any idea the World Cup would be this insanely big.

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DANIEL FRANKEL: Yes, those global World Cup audiences are going to be huge, but so will the $11 billion the opportunistic FIFA is about to make. Discussing FIFA’s very public, very ugly battle with New Jersey officials over public transportation, The New Republic describes the greedy soccer organization as seizing on a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to rake in a fortune, as the tournament may never be held in such an unrestrained cesspool of capitalism again.” With FIFA charging up to $25,000 for Copa del Mundo tickets and as much as $300 for parking, the DOJ might want to consider scale when it investigates the relatively reasonable NFL for demanding that its hardcore faithful purchase an Amazon Prime subscription. Credit FIFA President Gianni Infantino for that savvy move back in December when he manufactured a “peace prize” and gave it to our thirsty president.

As for me, I too took in a panel discussion — Puck sports-media scoopmeister John Ourand interviewing longtime NBC Sports acquisitions and partnerships executive Jon Miller. The latter’s team is coming off a wildly successful (waait for it) Legendary February, executing wonderfully on expensive live-sports rights investments for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and Super Bowl LX. I get that there’s this weird “sharks vs. jets” thing with “broadcasters” and “streamers.” But with streaming controlling 48% of U.S. TV usage during Legendary February versus just 22% for broadcast, I’m not sure there’s an honest discussion to be had anymore about what delivery mechanism should be the priority. Miller tried anyway: “I think broadcast is quite honestly stronger and more important than ever,” he said. “Peacock is a great complimentary service to NBC. It was never meant to displace anything on broadcast, but it has enabled us to go and make investments in properties that we wouldn’t have been able to make otherwise. We would not have been able to acquire the NBA if we didn’t have Peacock as a platform.”

I think framing NBC’s competitive future in this misleading way dulled a pretty solid argument that Miller also made — that at a time when Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Google are aggressively seeking live-sports rights, it’s the traditional linear media conglomerates — all of which are into streaming in a big way themselves — that still have inherent advantages. “The streamers have obviously deep pockets, but they’re not able to do a lot of the things we can do. And I think that gives us a strong competitive advantage,” Miller said, specifically citing investments over the past few decades not only in broadcast rights, but in production, infrastructure and data analytics. The semantics cloud the narrative — who cares how Miller and his group are delivering the goods. It’s the content that’s kicking ass.

Streaming live sports is hard. With over 500 events in the last year, we know 

BLOOM: I also ran into former Intel executives Rick Hack and Ravi Velhal, at the CREE8 booth in West Hall. Velhal just departed Intel after doing research work that helped enable the first 8K-resolution live TV broadcast, of the Paris Olympics in 2024. He’s also been deeply involved in producing new kinds of immersive theatrical experiences that have helped move that sector forward, too. His departure has to be considered yet another blow to struggling Intel as it navigates its new status as a chip foundry with a fat investment forced on it by the U.S. government and president. I chatted with CREE8 CEO Lisa Watts a few weeks ago at a mixer I co-host, and the company is one to watch, creating what it calls a “studio-in-the-box” that enables outfits to virtually bundle together collections of AI and other production tools from many vendors to speed set up and production wherever workers may be. Hack, who’s also chairman of the board of trade organization Digital Entertainment Group, is consulting with CREE8 among others. I’ll be fascinated to see where efforts like this company go in trying to build the integrated toolkits of the future, for a workforce that’s technically savvy, globally distributed and embracing new technologies.

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FRANKEL: I talked to the top sales guy for a major maker of cloud-based streaming infrastructure. The FAST market is finally maturing a bit — there’s no longer a line around the block of folks carrying large under-monetized libraries of video content. In fact, according to new Parks Associates research, the aggregate number of standalone streaming services has actually begun to ebb. Most of the FAST aspirants have put their hats in the ring by now, the exec told me. The new gold rush? Yup — short-form vertical programming targeted to Gen Z. We’re back to working those mobile phones again.

Back to NBC Sports, those NBA regular season ratings across NBC and Peacock were pretty impressive. The games averaged 2.8 million viewers, a 109% uptick over the comparable cable-focused frame in 2024-25. Let’s see if playoff ratings hold with the most provocative matchup being … Oklahoma City and San Antonio.

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BLOOM: Amid NAB news, plenty else is happening. Back in Los Angeles, that BlockTheMerger letter opposing the Paramount Skydance $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery now has nearly 4,000 signatures (up from 1,000 a couple of weeks ago), including plenty of familiar industry names. And completely relatedly, the industry’s long-festering problems with runaway and disappearing production are manifesting in the suddenly competitive Los Angeles mayor’s race, where Karen Bass is trying to hang on for a second term against relative newcomers lighting her up about problems with the Los Angeles Film Office, permitting delays and complications and so much else that makes it that much more expensive and time consuming to film in the industry’s home town. Replacing Bass with either City Councilmember Nithya Raman or former reality-TV star turned Palisades fire critic Spencer Pratt is no guarantee that, for instance, the remaining traditional Hollywood studios or the production wings of Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet will make more shows in Los Angeles, the world’s most filmed city. But after a messy reboot of Baywatch, which was shooting on Venice Beach after much negotiation and deal-making and $21 million in state filming incentives, both Pratt and Raman have opened fire on Bass’ listing candidacy. The election is still over a month away, but between the anti-merger activism and the attacks on Bass’ film operations, it’s pretty clear everyday workers are beyond fed up. Speaking of the merger, Paramount had an inexplicable online leak of, apparently, the entire new Avatar The Last Airbender animated film. If you’re not a manga/anime follower, you may not appreciate how intense and large the fanbase for this franchise is. But this one is something of a disaster for the animation efforts at Paramount, and the company’s response has been surprisingly low-key. Admittedly, they do have a few other things going on, and perhaps some employees facing imminent joblessness may be feeling a bit indifferent to the movie’s fate. But it’s not a great start for David Ellison’s ambitious plans for a big and diverse film slate.

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