The FIFA World Cup, the pinnacle of live sports excitement for hundreds of millions of fans who watch from every corner of the globe, is coming to North America this month, arriving at a scale broadcasters have never before had to handle.
Between the opening games on June 11 and the July 19 final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., participating countries—from defending champion Argentina to heavyweights France, England and Spain to Iran, Haiti and New Zealand—will play 104 fiercely contested soccer (aka “football”) matches in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, spread across 16 host cities and several time zones.
For fans, that means more than a month of football that will roll from city to city, stadium to stadium and screen to screen. For Fox Sports and Telemundo, the two host U.S. broadcasters, it means building coverage that can follow the tournament wherever it goes.
That’s the fun of this World Cup, and also the challenge: The coverage needs to feel close to the action in each city, with commentators and presenters plugged into the atmosphere on the ground while managing vast scale and maintaining consistency.
For American viewers, the end result should feel pretty simple: turn on the TV, open the app, catch the highlights and follow the story. Behind the scenes, it will take one of the most complex live sports production operations ever mounted.
To help make sense of this mammoth broadcasting event, TV Tech spoke with two key operators—Kevin Callahan, senior vice president of field operations and engineering for Fox Sports, and Miguel Lorenzo, senior vice president of sports for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises—about their plans and their vision for how the World Cup can run smoothly.
The Broadcast Chain
Before Fox Sports and Telemundo add their own presentation, the World Cup tournament starts with the host broadcast.
For this World Cup, that role sits with Host Broadcast Services (HBS), FIFA’s appointed host broadcaster, which is responsible for the core match coverage that global media partners receive and build upon, a role it has held for the last six men’s tournaments. The central hub for that operation will be the International Broadcast Center in Dallas, which acts as the tournament’s broadcast nerve center from as early as January through the end of July.
To step back for a moment, HBS provides the shared foundation: the match pictures, the stadium coverage and the technical backbone that allows broadcasters to follow the tournament from city to city.
Rightsholders, such as Fox and Telemundo in the U.S. or BBC and ITV in the U.K., then turn that feed into their own coverage, adding commentators, graphics, studio shows, interviews, streaming output, digital clips and the editorial voice their audiences expect.
Across a tournament of this size, that shared foundation keeps the operation coherent as matches move between 16 host cities. The IBC gives the broadcast chain a central point of coordination, while rightsholders use their own hubs to shape the final program.
For Fox, the English-language rightsholder, that means connecting Dallas with production facilities in Los Angeles; for Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, it means linking match operations with Telemundo Center in Miami alongside its teams on the ground across North America.
Fox’s Remote Production Model
The scale of the tournament has shaped Fox Sports’ editorial plan and its production model.
“The size of the 2026 FIFA World Cup is unlike anything else we have done,” Callahan said. “The distances covered in the tournament—as well as the number of hours of programming—have forced us to shift the way that we’re thinking and how we’re producing this event.
“All 104 matches will have commentators in-venue, which in and of itself is a feat,” he said. “But our studio show will be traveling to venues across the three countries as well.”
Taking this approach gives Fox a presence inside each stadium while keeping much of the production engine in familiar facilities.
“Fox Sports is leaning on our HRP workflows for both our match and studio coverage,” Callahan said. “The matches themselves are produced by HBS on behalf of FIFA. Fox will pick up that feed at the International Broadcast Center in Dallas and send it to production facilities in L.A.”
The size of the 2026 FIFA World Cup is unlike anything else we have done.”
Kevin Callahan, Fox Sports
Upgraded for the monthlong event, Fox Sports’ HRP (Home Run Productions) REMI infrastructure is a standards-based IP workflow that uses Appear’s X platform to support both JPEG XS and low-latency HEVC on a single platform.
“The commentator audio from the venues will also travel through the Broadcast Contribution Network to the IBC and then to our production facilities in L.A.,” Callahan said.
In Los Angeles, Fox will bring those pieces together for its final match coverage: commentator audio and Fox graphics will be combined in a match control room, while studio programming will be produced from two control rooms as presenters move between venues.
The technical bridge between those traveling studio teams and the L.A.-based hub will include Fox’s BRISK systems, which Callahan describes as ST 2110-based flypacks that integrate with the company’s permanent facilities, with JPEG XS encoding from Appear used to support low-latency feeds from venues back to the control rooms.
In practical terms, the model allows Fox to keep the live feel of a stadium production without having to replicate the same full-scale setup in every city. Commentators and hosts can remain close to the action, while core production staff work from a consistent base.
For viewers, the result should be a broadcast that still feels rooted in the stadium, while relying on centralized workflows to keep the overall operation manageable across more than a month of matches.
In a win for those who love high-fidelity TV, Fox said all studio and match content will be produced in 1080p and available via 4K distribution.
Telemundo’s Local and Platform Approach
For Telemundo, the scale of the tournament is tied closely to the communities hosting it.
“The scale is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Lorenzo said, echoing Fox’s Callahan. “With 104 matches across three countries, this is the largest World Cup ever, and our production reflects that.
One of the most critical components of ensuring reliable coverage of the FIFA World Cup is coordinating the limited spectrum to support all of the wireless mics, IFBs, cameras and other devices used to bring all the action to viewers.
To manage it all, the FCC has appointed Louis Libin (pictured), vice president of spectrum policy and engineering at Sinclair, as special frequency coordinator and RF spectrum manager for the tournament.
Libin will serve as the single point of contact for coordinating Broadcast Auxiliary Service (BAS) operations during the World Cup, with matches staged in 11 U.S. cities, as well as cities in co-host nations Canada and Mexico.
BAS stations, licensed under Part 74 of the FCC rules, allow TV and radio stations and networks to transmit program material between various locations (e.g., from remote sites to television studios, from studios to broadcast transmitters for delivery to consumers and between broadcast stations).
FWC 2026, a subsidiary of FIFA, said it anticipates using more than 2,700 pieces of equipment, such as interruptible foldback systems for real-time communication, wireless intercoms and talkbacks for production crews, and RF audio links for sound mixing and audio routing, to support over 300 media agencies.
Libin’s team will include an estimated 50% of RF engineers from local chapters of the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE). “I work with the people who are going to be at the venues,” he said. “There’s a structure created. Any kind of RF problems are handled by a local manager who deals with the frequency coordinators. If a problem needs to be escalated, then a regional manager gets involved.
“Hopefully, we have an organization in place that will work sort of automatically,” he added. “We tried something like this for the FIFA Club World Cup tournament last year.” — Tom Butts
“For Telemundo, it means a significantly expanded footprint...more matches, more cities, more talent, more resources and more content across every platform,” he added. “We will have a presence at every match and a much broader operation overall, but the focus remains the same: delivering an authentic, expert, entertaining and high-quality experience for fans.”
Telemundo’s approach is built around making that expanded footprint feel local. Lorenzo describes 2026 as “the most local World Cup ever,” with on-site teams and commentators capturing the atmosphere inside stadiums and across host cities.
“Being on-site is critical for us,” he said. “This historic World Cup is taking place in our country, our cities and communities. It’s the most local World Cup ever and our coverage needs to reflect and tap into that local excitement.
“We want audiences to feel the energy throughout all our coverage and for our commentators to channel the atmosphere in the stadium directly to audiences,” Lorenzo added. “That’s a big part of what makes our coverage unique.”
Telemundo Center in Miami gives the Spanish-language broadcaster’s on-the-ground operation a central base. Lorenzo said the facility allows the broadcaster to connect studio shows, digital and streaming while keeping teams close to the action at the venues.
Lorenzo said Telemundo Center also allows the broadcaster to “scale efficiently” while connecting “studio shows, digital, and streaming,” with NBCUniversal’s wider resources used to “ensure quality, speed, reliability and scale.”
“It’s a hybrid approach that gives us the best of both worlds: authenticity on the ground and the ability to deliver comprehensive coverage across platforms,” he said.
The mix of platforms is a major part of Telemundo’s World Cup plan: Every match will be available across broadcast, streaming service Peacock and the Telemundo app, with FAST channels, social and companion formats extending coverage around the live games.
“The goal is simple: deliver more games, more content, more access, and a seamless viewing experience across every screen,” Lorenzo said.
Test Case for Future Live Sporting Events
The 2026 NAB Show provided a preview of how broadcasters will handle World Cup coverage, with sessions covering live production, streaming scale, platform resilience and the next wave of digital fan experiences.
For Fox and Telemundo, those ideas are already moving from conference talking points into production plans. The World Cup needs people close to the action, with commentators in stadiums, presenters moving between host cities and coverage that picks up the noise and personality of each venue and moment.
Importantly, it also needs centralized control rooms, remote links, IP workflows, and platform teams capable of serving TV channels, streaming apps, digital clips, social feeds and highlights across 104 matches.
That balance makes the upcoming World Cup a useful test case for the next phase of live sports production under an increasingly hybrid model: Enough on-site presence to keep the coverage alive and enough centralized infrastructure to make a geographically scattered tournament feel joined up.
As Lorenzo rightly pointed out: “In the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, all stadiums were basically within a 35-mile radius. In 2026, the closest two stadiums are between New York [East Rutherford] and Philadelphia. The largest distances are between Miami and Vancouver.
“That is a lot of ground to cover but it’s also an amazing and unique position to be in because of the incredibly diverse storytelling opportunities,” he said.
For viewers, the best version of that future should feel straightforward. The match is on, the app works, the highlights arrive quickly and the coverage feels connected to the city where the game is being played.
Behind the scenes, the production chain will be doing far more work than ever to make the biggest World Cup yet feel easy to watch from anywhere in the world.
Whoever you are rooting for, have a fantastic World Cup. Your author will be in Guadalajara to see South Korea vs. Czechia on opening day and cheering on England to the final.
