GENEVA (AP) — Just 11 months before the inaugural 32-team Club World Cup in men’s soccer, FIFA invited bids on Monday for rights to broadcast the 63-game tournament to be staged in the United States.
FIFA published an “invitation to tender in the Americas, Asia, and Middle East & North Africa” weeks after talks with tech giant Apple over an exclusive global rights deal reportedly hit trouble.
FIFA said a second phase of rights sales for the 2025 and 2029 Club World Cups will follow in Europe. Soccer’s wealthiest and strongest continent will send 12 teams including key attractions Real Madrid, Manchester City and Bayern Munich to the revamped tournament scheduled next June 15 to July 13.
A relaunched and lucrative Club World Cup has been coveted by FIFA President Gianni Infantino since he was elected in 2016, with aims to pay participating teams tens of millions of dollars in prize money.
However, the value of a potential Apple deal was seen as an issue for the influential European Club Association (ECA) led by Nasser al-Khelaïfi, the president of Paris Saint-Germain which is also in the Club World Club lineup.
FIFA said on Monday it would involve the ECA in “an innovative, progressive style of consultation and decision-making” about the tournament.
The ECA already has a big say in commercial decisions for the Champions League through a joint venture with competition organizer UEFA.
It is unclear what kind of broadcast model FIFA now favors, or if it will rely on its in-house streaming service FIFA+ in some markets.
Entries to the Club World Cup are earned by title wins and consistently good results in continental championships from 2020-24, and just three are left to be decided: Two from South America and one from the host league, Major League Soccer.
The Club World Cup will become a month-long tournament played every four years in June-July. For nearly two decades it has been played each December as a small-scale annual event for continental champions. Europe’s champion has won 16 of the past 17 titles.
The FIFA club tournament also will be a rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup in men’s soccer in some of the same stadiums in the U.S., which is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico.
FIFA has yet to announce which cities will host games in the revamped Club World Cup nor any separate sponsor deals, though funding is expected from Saudi Arabia. The annual version was previously packaged up with World Cup deals.
Amid concerns at overloaded schedules for top-tier players, the first 32-team Club World Cup will see the finalists play seven games at the end of a season in which the Champions League in Europe also is expanding with more teams and more games in a new format.
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