In Reel AI, I’ve written about the startup making text-to-video AI for professionals, how data brokers have become the new Hollywood agents, athletes are using AI to build their own media empires, and why companies like Google are funding AI curricula at top film schools.
The American sports business has spent decades treating Spanish-language media like a niche. The World Cup is making that bifurcated approach look increasingly outdated.
Through the tournament’s opening stretch, Telemundo has delivered numbers most media executives dream about. Mexico-South Africa drew 13.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Cup opening match in U.S. history regardless of language and the most-watched men’s soccer match ever on Spanish-language television. (Fox’s English broadcast set its own opening-match record, at 7.1 million— the most ever for a World Cup opener in English.)
It was also the highest-rated telecast in Telemundo’s history. And across NBCUniversal’s digital platforms — including Telemundo.com, Spanish-language coverage on Peacock, and social-media viewing parties with celebrities like Trevor Noah — it became the most-streamed Mexico World Cup match ever, with streaming consumption up 485 percent versus 2022.
These are broadcast-network numbers — the kind that used to belong to the English-language feed. And they raise a question the industry has largely avoided: What if the distinction between Spanish-language and English-language media is disappearing?
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