The World Cup final this year was a massive event by any measure. Fox's English-language broadcast and streaming pulled in nearly 39 million people. But the real story might be what happened on the Spanish-language side.
Telemundo, which is owned by NBCUniversal, along with its streaming sibling Peacock and other NBC properties, drew about 24 million viewers for the final. That is the largest audience ever for a Spanish-language soccer broadcast in U.S. history. Across all 104 tournament matches, an average of 6.3 million people tuned in on Telemundo and Peacock each game.
Lee Berke, who serves as a sports media consultant and the CEO of LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media, offered a blunt assessment. He said: "This World Cup generated NFL style numbers, and if you could have aired those games, especially the Final, in prime time, it would have gotten closer to NFL championship numbers."
For NBCUniversal, the World Cup was more than just a good month of TV. It was a proof of concept. The company's Spanish-language network and its streaming service worked together in a way that brought in viewers the company had not reached before.
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Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group which includes Telemundo, said the tournament introduced huge new audiences to Peacock. "It not only brought so many new audiences and subscribers to Peacock, but it also introduced them to so much additional programming that they weren't familiar with," he said. The crossover went both ways.
After an advertising campaign for the show "El Señor de los Cielos," English-subtitle viewing of prior seasons increased by 42%, according to NBCUniversal.
Mark Marshall, NBCUniversal's chairman of global advertising and partnerships, made a bigger point about what this means for advertisers. Data from a 2025 Nielsen report shows that U.S. Hispanics make up roughly 20% of the population and control over $4.1 trillion in spending capacity. Marshall said that kind of spending power should be the centerpiece of a media plan, not an afterthought. The World Cup appeared to prove that point.
The World Cup also highlighted how live sports are increasingly driving streaming subscriptions. By offering the tournament across both a traditional broadcast network and a digital platform, NBCUniversal captured viewers who might have otherwise watched on a single service, deepening engagement with Peacock.
Peacock is on track to become profitable in the second quarter of 2026. That would be a milestone for a service that has been spending heavily on content, especially live sports. Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, will report its earnings results on Thursday. Investors will be watching for how the World Cup bump shows up in the numbers.
Looking ahead, NBCUniversal is already building on this momentum. Starting with the 2027-28 season, Telemundo secured the Spanish-language broadcast rights for the UEFA Champions League. Meanwhile, FIFA may bundle the U.S. English and Spanish broadcast rights for both the 2030 and 2034 tournaments into a single package instead of selling them individually. Berke noted that "there seemed to be a lot of cannibalization in Spanish language for this World Cup" and that selling the rights together could make sense, "particularly when it's being offered on a stream basis."
For someone holding Comcast stock, the takeaway is that live sports in both languages are proving to be a powerful subscriber magnet. The Hispanic audience is not a niche sideline - it is a $4 trillion economic force that is growing. As streaming services fight for every new user, the companies that can authentically serve that audience might have an edge that is hard to copy.
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