During the 2026 Men’s World Cup in North America, Fox touted their experts, personalities, and coverage as the exclusive English-language broadcaster in the U.S. for the tournament. While Fox’s highlights included Rebecca Lowe’s artful hosting, veteran announcer JP Dellacamera’s final tournament commentary, new analyst Javier Hernández’s well-researched insights, and the energetic stadium-side broadcasts that borrowed from College Gameday, the bombastic gravity of Zlatan Ibrahimović and Alexi Lalas occasionally felt inescapable. Add to that the repetitive commercials that came more frequently than ever before and the tiresome analogies to other American sports to explain the game, Fox’s approach caused many soccer fans in the U.S. to apparently turn to Telemundo regardless of if they could understand Spanish or not. The sentiment that arose across social media spaces—and even in a cheeky McSweeney’s post—was that English-speaking fans of soccer chose Telemundo as the more authentic and engaging outlet for World Cup matches. The audience of soccer fans in the U.S., established and cultivated through decades of cable and streaming viewings of MLS, European leagues, and the like, didn’t need for announcers to explain that a number ten on the field was like a quarterback in terms of playmaking. Nor did they perhaps appreciate Fox’s third time broadcasting a men’s World Cup mired in controversies while talking about them far less than, for example, Lalas’ complaints about Ada Hegerberg sitting out the 2019 women’s World Cup to protest gender inequality.

But the main sticking point in Telemundo’s favor was their decision not to cut away to commercials during hydration/match breaks. Instead, they showed the international FIFA feed of the teams huddled on the pitch during the newly mandated breaks about 22 minutes into each half. The hydration breaks were required of all games, even those in climate-controlled stadia, and remain a contentious change to gameplay. While some games that were played in sweltering heat and humidity certainly needed the pause, the requirement was clearly to aid in ad sales for U.S. broadcasters. They were successful, if the estimates of over $500 million in advertising revenue for the tournament is any indication. But they also stand as a symbol of the negative type of Americanization of soccer that contradicts decades of soccer being framed as an alternative, more cosmopolitan and elite U.S. televised sport based in the logics of cable and streaming niches. Hence, the turn to Telemundo and the promotion of what Telemundo gets right as articulated in this clip by Trevor Noah. (It should be noted Telemundo does not have as much control over angles, edits, and replays that Noah attributes to them; the FIFA global feed dictates much of that.) And, of course, many soccer fans already had access to Telemundo within Peacock, since that streamer is the home of English Premier League soccer in the U.S. Accessibility, greater sense of authenticity, and as Noah notes, insider insights wrought through the melodramatic televisual focus on nonverbal communication and facial reactions of the coaches and players in the sideline huddle all combine to draw U.S. soccer fans beyond the Spanish-speaking population to Telemundo. In particular, I would speculate that Telemundo provided greater appeal to the embedded U.S. soccer audience because of its positive attributes but also as an alternative to a Fox approach that aligned more with NFL broadcasts than MLS (or Premier League, or Champions League, or NWSL). Fox was for the every-four-years fans, and Telemundo was for the every-season soccer fans.