U.S. Soccer’s new TV deal with Turner Sports will put games on HBO Max and TNT

This article was updated on Jan. 17, 2023, with new details.

The U.S. Soccer Federation’s next English-language TV rights deal has been won by WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports, the two entities announced Tuesday, with an eight-year agreement that multiple sources said is worth around $25 million per year. But for the first time in the governing body’s history, it’s not a TV-first deal.

WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max will be the primary home for U.S. senior men’s and women’s national team home games, with an expectation that there will be over 20 such games per year between the programs. Cable channel TNT will carry many of the games, but not all — which means when it comes to coverage in English, some games will be streaming-only.

Of course, this being international soccer, the definition of “home games” isn’t straightforward. U.S. Soccer officially holds the rights to men’s and women’s national team friendlies, men’s national team home World Cup qualifiers, and the U.S. Open Cup for men’s club teams across the country. That’s what’s in this deal.

Some of the friendlies are significant, such as World Cup and Olympics send-off games, the U.S. men’s team’s hosting of rival Mexico, and the U.S. women’s team’s SheBelieves Cup. But the big games that U.S. teams play in Concacaf and FIFA tournaments are in separate deals, even when those games are on U.S. soil.

There may be new mini-tournaments created here that Turner would have a role in. The company also will create a lot of digital content through its popular online platform Bleacher Report, including behind-the-scenes documentaries.

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The $25 million per year rights fee is a win for U.S. Soccer, as it matches the combined sum earned from the current English and Spanish rights deals with ESPN, Fox and Univision. A new Spanish-language rights deal is still to come.

This deal’s eight-year length is also big news, because it means U.S. Soccer won’t be able to take its rights to market right after hosting the 2026 men’s World Cup. The 2028 Olympics will also come and go, as will the 2027 women’s World Cup.

The last year of the deal will be 2030, a men’s World Cup year, with a women’s World Cup to follow in 2031. U.S. Soccer is working on a bid to host that tournament, though it could decide to bid for 2027 instead. (Neither bidding process has started yet.)

For Turner, the stability of a long-term deal makes lots of sense. As Turner Sports president Lenny Daniels told The Inquirer: “There’s nothing we do that has a short term view. … I think this fits perfectly into our ability to grow the sport.”

But is it right for U.S. Soccer? U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone made the case that it is.

“WarnerMedia will give U.S. Soccer the opportunity to reach a massive audience and connect with new fans across all their properties, both linear and digital,” she said. “Maybe we could have gotten a little jump after ‘26 but it’s about the broader vision and telling the U.S. Soccer story, obviously within our national teams but also outside of our senior national teams — with our youth, para, beach, futsal, crossing over into culture and lifestyle. So we just felt like WarnerMedia was the perfect partner for us, and we wanted a long term deal to develop that relationship and to have them help us grow the game in all aspects.”

This was the first time that U.S. Soccer took its broadcast rights to market on its own in over 20 years. From 2002 through last year, Major League Soccer’s marketing arm, Soccer United Marketing, managed the rights. The 2022 deal was struck in a time when no English-language U.S. TV network bought the rights to that year’s men’s World Cup. The U.S. men went on to reach the quarterfinals that year, sparking a rise in interest — and helping MLS in its rights deals.

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Last May, U.S. Soccer announced that it was taking its media rights back in-house, and would negotiate them on their own. This was done partly for its own sake, and partly to prove the increased value of U.S. women’s team games. Daniels gave the women’s team’s drawing power a strong endorsement.

“You can argue it’s best women’s team in sports, right?” Daniels said. “We look at the ascending men’s team, and the women’s team, and we look at it combined, and we try to grow all of soccer into more fandom, more engagement, more people involved in how they’re enjoying the game of soccer.”

Now the governing body will end a decades-long partnership with ESPN, which through its cable channels and ties to ABC has been the main outlet for national team home games since the 1980s. Fox has also had a package of national team home game rights since 2015. Multiple sources confirmed to The Inquirer that ESPN and Fox did not bid on this deal.

Fox will continue to air some U.S. games through 2026, thanks to rights deals with Concacaf for the men’s Gold Cup and FIFA for all of its global tournaments. The last big piece of Fox’s current FIFA contract is the 2026 men’s World Cup, which will obviously will be a financial bonanza.

CBS also has a package of Concacaf rights that includes the men’s Nations League and women’s W Championship tournaments. The next edition of the latter event is coming this July, set to serve as the qualifying event for both next year’s World Cup and the 2024 Olympics.

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Does it matter that no games in the new U.S. Soccer deal will be on free-to-air broadcast TV in English? Cone doesn’t think so.

“We have a very young audience, and a very diverse audience, and a very tech-savvy audience, so I’m not concerned about them being able to find HBO Max,” Cone said.

And does it matter that men’s World Cup qualifying won’t be as big a deal in the 2030 cycle, since expanding the tournament to 48 teams starting in 2026 will make it far easier to qualify? Daniels took that one.

“We really don’t know what it’s going to be,” he said, “but I think knowing that it’s there and knowing that we can value it at some point makes sense.”

TNT and TBS are well-known to sports fans, with their offerings of the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, and part of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Turner’s hockey games will end up on HBO Max at some point in the future, though the network hasn’t decided exactly when.

HBO Max currently costs $9.99 per month, or $14.99 without ads. Annual deals cost $99.99 or $149.99, respectively. But any cable and satellite TV subscribers (or equivalents like YouTube TV and SlingTV) who get the HBO TV channel get access at no additional cost. Last month, the company said its TV and streaming platforms reach a combined 73.1 million subscribers.

Turner’s past dalliances with soccer started with the 1990 men’s World Cup. Officially, the first U.S. men’s game of the new deal on TNT will be the team’s first appearance on the channel since June 19, 1990 — a 2-1 loss to Austria in the group stage finale of the men’s team’s first World Cup in 40 years.

In 2001, TNT was one of a few national TV homes for the first year of the Women’s United Soccer Association, whose teams included the Philadelphia Charge.

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In 2018, Turner started a three-season deal for the UEFA men’s Champions League and Europa League. The coverage wasn’t well-liked by many fans, and Turner opted out of the deal in June 2020 because of the pandemic.

Some of that criticism resurfaced when the news of Turner’s U.S. Soccer deal broke. Daniels said the network took lessons from it.

“The type of fan, the passions that drive a soccer fan, what really does move the needle, I think we learned a lot about that,” he said. “There’s a lot more ability to do different types of productions that we have here than we did with the Champions League. Not to say that was right or wrong or good or worse or better, I just think it offers the ability for us to take a different view of it.”

Turner has also changed as a company since then. There’s new leadership, and more importantly, a forthcoming merger with Discovery that could give the new company even more desire for sports rights — including soccer. The merger cleared antitrust regulators earlier this month, and is likely to be concluded in the spring.

Could U.S. games also be streamed on Discovery+ when the time comes? Daniels deferred comment, understandably since the deal isn’t official yet. But he did say that there’s flexibility in this deal to expand streaming availability if the opportunity comes.

It’s also an open secret around American soccer circles that Turner is interested in a piece of MLS’s next rights deal, which will also start next year. So it was natural to ask Daniels about that, and he answered.

“Obviously MLS is out there, there’s others out there,” he said, “and as I’m sure every other company is talking and learning more about it, so are we.”