A five-part docuseries chronicling the USMNT’s journey to the 2026 FIFA World Cup debuts Tuesday night on HBO, four years after cameras started rolling. The project, titled “U.S. Against the World: Four Years With the Men’s National Team,” is the result of a major financial bet and operational lift by upstart production studio Park Stories -- one that didn’t always appear poised to pay off.
Rand Getlin, a former NFL reporter for Yahoo Sports and NFL Media, and partner Janina Pelayo founded Park Stories in 2017. After working with USMNT captain Tyler Adams on a short piece for ill-fated streaming service Quibi, they approached both U.S. Soccer and the U.S. National Soccer Team Players Association in 2020 about a broader series about the team leading up to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
In May 2022, U.S. Soccer gave Park Stories the green light to begin filming immediately. That, however, didn’t come with any financial commitment.
“We began by deficit financing production,” Getlin said. “From May of 2022 on, we were in our pocket to make the bets, and we followed them all the way through Qatar.”
The production was publicly announced in August of that year, but reception from media companies was icy. There was little confidence in the national team and lingering uncertainty about public interest following the team’s failure to qualify four years earlier for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
“Every single place in Hollywood passed,” Getlin said.
That changed during the 2022 World Cup, when streamers took notice of the broad interest in the competition. Three of the U.S.’s four matches averaged more than 10 million viewers on Fox alone, and the final between Argentina and France averaged nearly 26 million viewers across Fox and Telemundo.
Park Stories began negotiating with several companies after the World Cup in early 2023 before winding up with HBO. The deal, finalized in December 2023, gave Park Stories the backing to expand the project from a speculative, self-financed production into a high-end docuseries following the team through the 2026 World Cup cycle.
The project has involved not only capturing footage of the national team during camps and events, but also spending time with more than a dozen prospective national team players while playing with their club teams around the world. In all, Pelayo said the production involved 300 shoot days in 12 countries, with stops in 67 cities and 37 live matches.
The scale of the project extended beyond filming to the acquisition of footage from dozens of rights holders, including FIFA, Concacaf and CONMEBOL, along with leagues around the world such as the Bundesliga, Premier League and Serie A.
“In soccer, the rights are so fragmented -- it is hyper fragmented,” Pelayo said. “But a simpler version of this would’ve sold the players short. We don’t want to not give them their introduction because we couldn’t afford the rights on where they played at this tournament. So, it was very expensive, but we felt like it was a must-have.”
While Park Stories declined to provide specifics on their budget or compensation for the project, Getlin said they received top dollar for a sports docuseries, comparing it to Netflix’s episodic outlay for “Formula 1: Drive to Survive.”
After pouring years of their lives into their debut original streaming docuseries, Getlin and Pelayo are hopeful it will attract the attention of other sports properties eager to use long-form access-driven storytelling to grow their profiles with fans, sponsors and media partners.
