Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, says soccer has indisputably reached “critical mass” in the United States. One sign, he said, is how many non-Spanish speakers have “woken up” to NBCU’s coverage on Telemundo and Peacock.
Speaking at Telemundo’s Playmakers event at NBCU’s 30 Rock headquarters Wednesday, Conde noted the size of World Cup viewership across both English and Spanish, which reached into the mid-40 millions for quarterfinal matches. At that scale, the tune-in is higher than the NBA Finals or baseball’s World Series, exceeded only by the NFL.
Telemundo, which is in Conde’s portfolio along with NBC News, local stations and other properties, has Spanish-language rights to the World Cup, with Fox broadcasting in English. A running theme in the media and among fans during the five-week tournament has been the ways the networks’ respective approaches to game coverage differ. One panelist at the Wednesday event noted one compare-and-contrast: Telemundo does not air commercials during the “hydration breaks” created for this tournament by FIFA. Conde didn’t touch that topic but found a way to gesture at the divide.
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“Audiences have woken up to the coverage of soccer, regardless of language, when it’s covered in a very authentic way,” he said. “The fact that Telemundo has generated so much of its audience in this World Cup from non-Spanish speakers speaks to that genuine passion for the sport. The numbers and the trends speak to the fact that we’re in a different moment for soccer.”
Sunday’s title game between defending champion Argentina and Spain figures to be a blockbuster, especially on Telemundo’s side of the aisle. Asked if he preferred Argentina or its semifinal opponent, England, Conde demurred. But one senior Telemundo exec Deadline spoke with said the matchup is a “dream scenario” given the strong loyalty of both fan bases, and the fact that both are Spanish-speaking countries.
The interview with Conde was conducted by NBC News anchor Tom Llamas, so corporate synergy generally prevailed over probing questions. But Llamas seemed to be winking at press reports of tensions between Fox and Telemundo. Under the terms of its contract with FIFA, the NBCU division is obligated to promote coverage as “Copa Mundial” and take other steps to avoid confusion. Fox execs, it has been reported, feel NBCU has maneuvered around the restrictions and has an unfair route to viewers through Peacock, an English-language service where Telemundo programming airs. Peacock is about half the price of Fox’s flagship streaming service, Fox One.
The exact number of non-Spanish speakers tuning into Telemundo’s broadcasts is nearly impossible to determine. Some of the sense of crossover has to do with meme culture, and social media’s embrace of lead Telemundo announcer Andrés Cantor and his singular, signature call of “gooooooaaaaaaaalllll!”
Llamas asked Conde, who spent many years preparing for the 2026 World Cup, what the biggest surprise had been thus far after all of that planning.
“Soccer is the biggest global sport,” he replied. “It’s the fastest-growing team sport here in the United States. And we had high expectations, but I don’t think that we even in our best dream had the expectation of this passionate of a fan base here.”
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