Caretta Research has released its latest forecast predicting record revenues for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

A record $8.9 billion in total revenue is expected, said the company, representing a 54% increase over the 2022 tournament. Growth will predominantly be driven by the rise in commercial and matchday revenues, with sports rights also having an effect.

FIFA’s decision to increase the number of teams from 32 to 48 is seen as a key driver for growth, with the number of games rising from 64 in 2022 to 104 this year, providing further opportunities to sell content. Commercial revenue is expected to rise by nearly $300 million, as traditional advertising opportunities are augmented with the inclusion of cooling breaks and an expanded half-time Super Bowl-style show.

Revenue from sports rights sold to media organizations is predicted to grow by $1 billion, a 32% increase on 2022, although its overall share will be reduced, falling below to per cent for the first time since at least 1998, said Caretta. The higher number of matches to be broadcast has diluted the rights value per game, which has decreased by 19%.

Regional time differences present a “significant difficulty for international media,’ said the company. The total volume of broadcast deals has fallen to 443 from 495 in 2022, a decrease of 11%. This highlights FIFA’s shift towards fewer broadcast partnerships with substantially higher individual values. Secondary broadcasters and sub-licensers have stepped away from the market, due to the challenges presented by time zone differences.

A clear regional split has been defined, with the total number of broadcast deals across Latin American and the Caribbean increasing by 18% while in Asia, the number fell by 21%.

Commenting on the findings, Evangelos Vrysellas, research analyst at Caretta Research, said, “Even though FIFA is set for record-breaking total revenue in 2026, the international broadcast landscape is becoming increasingly difficult. Media rights now represent a smaller portion of the overall revenue pie, with the value of each individual match dropping by 19%. The combination of middle-of-the-night kick-offs for major global markets and rising production expenses has discouraged many potential bidders, leading to a 11% drop in the total number of broadcast deals”.

This article original appeared on TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope.

The popularity of ‘Game of Thrones’ is evident not only in its massive weekly ratings, but also in the amount of viral content that its fans end up creating. For those behind “GoT,” and for other broadcasters and their content, it is important to know how and where that content is being used. That is where Pex’s fingerprint technology comes into play.

Started five years ago, Pex developed its initial technology to be a “Shazam-like” product for video, allowing people to simply aim their smartphone at a television screen to find out what is playing. “There wasn’t much support for that, so we pivoted to doing more analytics and rights management work,” said Amadea Choplin, Pex’s chief operating officer.

Today, Pex uses that same fingerprinting technology to identify audio or video that matches the content of a rights holder as soon as it is uploaded online by forgoing metadata and instead tracking the content itself. Choplin says this accomplishes two goals: “It helps rights holders see where their content is getting uploaded by you and me or other rights holders … and then act on whether that is damaging their rights; but also understand the virality of their content.”

“So if a TV show is getting tons of memes and gifs created off of their characters, then they would be able to see exactly how many of those have been uploaded, how many times it’s been viewed and shared and liked, and better understand their audience for their content.”

Choplin says Pex could help broadcasters, gain a better understanding of the audience beyond their own channels (think Facebook or other social media platforms), as well as be used as an anti-piracy measure.

Pex also serves as its own kind of discovery engine, according to Choplin. Rather than having to manually search for uses of content, the fingerprinting technology automatically identifies content—even from clips as short as a half a second—and makes them easy for users to find them and address.

As it pertains to “Game of Thrones,” in the final season’s first five episodes, more than 38,000 copies of content that have earned more than a billion views and 46 million engagements were discovered by Pex across social platforms using its technology.

Find out more pex.com.

BERGEN, NORWAY—Vimond Media Solutions is set to launch an add-on to its Video Platform providing OTT rights management. This new rights management package, which integrates with the Vimond Control Center, facilitates the global management of content rights, playback restrictions and contract negotiations.

Rights impact content life-cycles at many points, from acquisition to enforcement of digital rights management and licensing windows to streaming quantities, geo-blocking, downloading and more. Vimond Rights Manager is said to help publishers to manage that complexity. As an example, Vimond says, a publisher using its rights management software who has purchased eight seasons of a show, each with 12 episodes, eliminates the need to create an object for each of these 96 assets. Instead, the tool allows a publisher to select and create all objects at once, and then simplifies rights management by enabling selection of the applicable rights, restrictions and licenses for any given combination of objects.

When negotiating contracts, Vimond said broadcasters and publishers can use this tool to track which rights they have and which ones they are seeking. Once digital rights are acquired for any given content—within a certain timeframe, at specified resolutions and any other restrictions and at an agreed-upon cost—users of the VCC-integrated Vimond rights manager can push a button to make the content available. The tool also enables the fetching, validation and publishing of enriched metadata from Gracenote, the comprehensive move and actor database.

Vimond Media Solutions will be at IBC 2016 in booth 14.F19.