Now TV, the Hong Kong pay-TV broadcaster owned by IT and telecommunications giant PCCW, has secured exclusive rights for men’s soccer’s flagship upcoming FIFA World Cup.
Now TV will exclusively air all 104 matches during the tournament, while PCCW’s free-to-air entertainment channel ViuTV will provide coverage of selected matches, including the opening match and the final.
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Full access to Now TV’s coverage will be available to subscribers, with the broadcaster also offering full tournament and match passes.
The tournament is due to run from June 12 to July 20 across the US, Canada, and Mexico, with the competition significantly expanded from 32 to 48 teams.
The rights agreement comes more than a year after FIFA launched two invitations to tender covering the men’s World Cup in 2026 and the Women’s World Cup in 2027 (Brazil).
This year’s edition will be the third consecutive men’s FIFA World Cup broadcast by Now TV since 2018. Ahead of the 2022 edition in Qatar, Now TV bought the rights from the Infront agency and also aired the women’s 2023 tournament, held across Australia and New Zealand.
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By GlobalDataNeither the men's nor the women's representative Hong Kong teams have ever qualified for a FIFA World Cup.
The rights add to Now TV’s strong portfolio of sports rights, including English soccer’s elite Premier League through the 2027-28 season, Spanish soccer’s LaLiga through the 2025-26 season, and North American basketball’s NBA.
Now TV joins other Asian broadcasters that have recently struck rights deals, including Aleph (Philippines), Mediacorp (Singapore), TVRI (Indonesia), Dentsu (Japan), and Ictimai (Azerbaijan).
The deal also comes after world governing body FIFA’s decision to sell its media rights for the current World Cup cycle directly in the entire Asian market for the first time after taking the process in-house.
FIFA has historically appointed agencies – predominantly Infront – for selling media rights in the Asia-Pacific region, except for South Korea, Japan, and Malaysia, where it has managed sales directly.
In the 2019-2022 World Cup sales cycle, Switzerland-based Infront sold media rights for FIFA in 26 Asian countries.
Despite a long-running relationship with Infront, the organization opted to negotiate deals in-house to “closer manage its broadcast relationships.”
However, FIFA did retain Infront as an advisor in selected Asian territories on media rights for the 2026 World Cup and 2027 Women’s World Cup.
These markets are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
