SBJ Unpacks: FIFA World Cup cities get early holiday gift

Tonight in Unpacks: FIFA officials released the draw for the 2026 Men’s World Cup, and while fans know what teams are in which groups, cities are eager to learn which teams they’re hosting ... especially those that travel well.

Also tonight:

• Jordan: ‘Someone had to step forward and challenge’ NASCAR
• Garber delivers unique MLS ‘State of the League’ in D.C.
• Ohio State-Michigan delivers biggest college football audience of 2025 season
• Thanksgiving has NFL thinking bigger

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Austin Karp wraps up the week with chatter about the big names who showed up at Friday’s FIFA Men’s World Cup draw, this weekend’s college conference championship games and the implications of what Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery could mean for sports.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Host city leaders have been waiting three years to find out which 2026 FIFA World Cup matches are coming to their markets. Friday’s final draw at the Kennedy Center helped narrow down the possibilities, but they’ll have to wait until Saturday for FIFA to release the final schedule in a separate event.

“At the moment, it’s a little bit like Christmas Eve,” Philadelphia host city executive and CEO Meg Kane told SBJ moments after the draw. “It’s like we have an idea of what presents might be under the tree, but we’re not sure what Santa’s going to deliver.”

Cities have known for more than a year how many matches they will host during each phase of the competition, but only the host countries’ group stage matches have been identified. For the rest of the group stage, they have also known which of the 12 group letters they are associated with. Those letters -- Group G or Group K, for example -- mean a lot more with the draw results now determined.

“When you see in Group C that Brazil and Morocco are there, when you see in Group E Germany, when you see France in Group I and you see England and Croatia in Group L, those are obviously enormous opportunities and exciting possibilities for match play in Philadelphia,” Kane said.

The stakes of the draw and schedule release are high for host cities hoping to maximize the generational opportunity to put their city on display for a global audience, raise funds to cover the costs of hosting and drive economic impact. The difference between hosting a country like Spain, Germany or England, with a large fan base that travels well, and a team like Iran or Haiti, whose fans might not be able to travel to the U.S., at all is extremely consequential.

“Anytime you get Argentina, Netherlands, England, Croatia, Japan -- that’s a pretty strong set of teams right there for our five group matches,” said Dallas Sports Commission Exec Dir Monica Paul. “We don’t know technically the match schedule or the match times, but coming out of the draw, I’m pretty ecstatic.”

Paul said she and her delegation in D.C. that includes Dallas World Cup committee co-chairs Dan Hunt and Nina Vaca will immediately look to link up with the federations who are likely to play matches in Dallas.

“We know a lot of their delegations are here, a lot of their delegations will be coming starting as early as Sunday to all the cities just to see training sites, base camps, hotels and get the lay of the land,” Paul said. “They need to make some decisions, especially on the base camps. So, we’re going to be proactive today while we’re here with them and look forward to hosting them next week.”

Following the schedule release on Saturday, countries will home in on their preferred base camp sites, where they will train ahead of the competition and in between matches. Some have been putting together short lists over the past few months. Their deadline to submit their top choices to FIFA, which is running the process, is Jan. 5, so conversations and visits will be intense over the next few weeks. The online brochure currently includes 64 options across the three host countries in both host cities and non-host cities.

Basketball legend Michael Jordan testified for about an hour in a packed courtroom in Charlotte on Friday. Jordan co-owns 23XI with Denny Hamlin and is part of an antitrust lawsuit, along with Front Row Motorsports, against NASCAR.

Jordan testified that he owns 60% of the race team and had invested $35M to $40M, but needed to take action against NASCAR’s charter system, which he said was not economically viable.

“I wanted a partnership, and permanent charters wasn’t even a consideration,” Jordan said. “The pillars that the teams wanted, no one on the NASCAR side even negotiated or compromised. They were not even open-minded to welcome those conversations, so this is where we ended up.”

Here are SBJ’s Adam Stern’s observations of the key moments of Jordan’s testimony:

• Jordan took the witness stand Friday, saying 23XI sued NASCAR because he felt that “someone had to step forward and challenge the entity to understand that it is a real concern from our aspect,” in terms of charters not being permanent or having better economic terms. Jordan noted that he “was a new person, I wasn’t afraid.”
• “Look, we saw the economics wasn’t really beneficial to the teams,” Jordan said. “The thing I see in NASCAR that I think is absent is a shared responsibility of growth as well as loss.”
• When Jordan was being questioned about his upbringing by the teams’ lawyer and asked if he played for any teams other than the Chicago Bulls, he responded, “I tried to forget, but I did play” for the Washington Wizards.
• NASCAR lawyer Larry Buterman asked Jordan if he remembered telling Jim France that he felt that the charter system was a “great service” to teams, as he apparently had recounted in pretrial hearings. The lawyer also asked Jordan if he realized that the Frances built Talladega.
• The genesis of Buterman asking Jordan if he knew the Frances built Talladega is that Jordan testified that he went to ‘Dega as a fan when he was a kid. Buterman’s point was whether 23XI is giving proper credit to what the Frances have done for NASCAR.
• Jordan concluded his time on the stand, with his lawyer trying to make the jury understand that 23XI Racing being profitable in some years and buying three charters doesn’t mean that 23XI feels the current system is fair. (The third charter, purchased in 2024, cost $28M.)
• Judge Kenneth Bell told the jury before court ended Friday that his goal is still to get the trial over by next Friday, but that he is no longer as confident that that can happen. He then summoned the lead attorneys to his chambers.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Traditionally, MLS Commissioner Don Garber holds his annual “State of the League” press conference at the site of MLS Cup. But with Inter Miami hosting the Whitecaps a day after the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw in D.C., the league instead hosted media and soccer luminaries for a joint press conference-reception at Audi Field on Thursday night. Recognizing a unique opportunity to influence global opinion of the league, Garber tailored his messaging to the large contingent of international press in town for the draw that also attended MLS’s event.

He sought to dispel the lingering perception that MLS is a “retirement league,” pointing out the average age of new international players since 2018 is just 24. He touted the league — with its cost-controlled roster rules and lack of promotion and relegation — as a beacon of stability in an often-unstable sport around the world. Most importantly, he highlighted MLS’s growth over the past 30 years into a significant part of the North American sports landscape and an increasingly meaningful player in the global soccer ecosystem.

“As we prepare to host the world again in 2026, the progress is not just clear — it’s extraordinary,” Garber said. “Soccer has arrived, and Major League Soccer is one of the drivers behind the success of the sport in our region today.”

Boldfaced names in attendance included U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson and President Cindy Parlow Cone, Audi of America President Daniel Weissland, D.C. United owner Jason Levien and President of Business Operations Danita Johnson, Brazilian Football Confederation Director of International Offices & Relations Bruno Costa, former MLS Deputy Commissioner Mark Abbott and St. Louis City SC President & GM Diego Gigliani.

Whitecaps in crisis?

Garber fielded questions from both international journalists attending their first MLS event and domestic reporters who cover the league regularly. His most newsworthy remarks came in response to a question about the state of the Whitecaps ahead of their first MLS Cup appearance on Saturday.

Garber stressed the precarity of the team’s future in the city of Vancouver. He said the league is “not necessarily on a path” to securing a long-term stadium solution in the team’s home market, which could force MLS and ownership to “make some tough decisions.”

The Whitecaps are tenants at BC Place, a 42-year-old multi-purpose stadium owned by the province of British Columbia, and their lease expires at the end of the year. Garber has repeatedly described the situation under the expiring agreement as “untenable.” While Garber and Whitecaps ownership have recently met with both British Columbia Premier David Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, the commissioner expressed frustration with the lack of progress coming out of those discussions.

“We’re looking at getting a better lease at BC Place. Right now, there’s been no movement on that — it’s been a month,” Garber said. “We’re looking at trying to get a better dynamic for a potential soccer stadium. Our owner’s been talking about that for a year — there’s not much movement there.”

Notes and quotes

• Garber said to expect announcements regarding reformed roster rules aimed at making the league’s on-field product more competitive globally “over the next number of months.” He has touted such changes as a key pillar of his vision for MLS 3.0 but has yet to provide details, and it remains to be seen how far owners are willing to go. “We’ll continue to do what we’re doing and push the envelope without being reckless,” he said.

• Garber said he doesn’t believe MLS’s ability to experience a “World Cup bump” is riding on a strong performance by the U.S. men’s national team in 2026. “I will be cheering for our national team, and I hope that [coach Mauricio Pochettino] picks a lot of MLS players, and they can hopefully lift a trophy,” he said. “But I don’t think there is a dependency today the way there was years ago.”

• Garber reflected on the recent changes to the league’s media deal with Apple: “When we put games on Apple TV, our audiences grew. So, Apple and we sat down and said, ‘This is a no brainer.’ Let’s just move our games to Apple TV. We had a deal that was a revenue share based on the subscriptions [to MLS Season Pass]. When that went away, we sat down and said, ’Let’s re-do our deal,’ and that has a different term and some other elements.”

Fox delivered the biggest college football audience of the season with Ohio State-Michigan on Saturday, and the 18.4 million viewers is up 49% from the same game last season, showing a huge boost aided by Nielsen’s full out-of-home and Big Data. It’s the second-best college football game on Fox ever, behind only the 19.1 million the same game got in 2023. The second-best Thanksgiving weekend CFB audience came from Texas-Texas A&M on Black Friday, with ABC drawing 13 million viewers. That’s the best weekday CFB audience on record, passing the Iron Bowl in 2010 (12.5 million). It’s also the best audience on record for the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry. Another rivalry game on Black Friday -- Clean Old Fashioned Hate on ABC -- saw the network draw 8.7 million viewers. That’s the best audience on record for Georgia Tech-Georgia as well.

Looking across the 20 most-watched games of the regular season heading into conference championship weekend, Fox has the top two games in Ohio State-Michigan and the Texas-Ohio State game from Week 1 (12.3 million viewers). But ABC delivered 17 of the top 20, fueled again by the SEC package. Alabama and Georgia each put six games in the top 20 (including their own matchup at No. 9). Texas was next with four games in the top 20, then Oklahoma with three. Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, LSU and Ohio State each had two as well.

Both ESPN and Fox had their Saturday pregame shows in Ann Arbor on Saturday. “Big Noon Kickoff,” which started at 11am ET and ran until a little after noon, drew 4.4 million viewers, which is the show’s second-best audience yet. In that same window, ESPN/ESPNU drew 3.9 million for “College GameDay” (the full show averaged 3.1 million from 9am-12pm). For the season, “GameDay” has averaged a record audience once again and is up 23% from the record set last year. “BNK” also was up 14% for its best audience yet, but the show is just measured from 11am-12pm now, vs. 10am-12pm in the past.

When a game breaks the previous regular-season viewership record by 36 percent, it’s appropriate to ask: What is the NFL going to do with this? Simply trying to break the record again next Thanksgiving seems inadequately ambitious. The better question is: How does a regular season number like this -- even knowing it’s possible -- influence media-rights strategizing for the next round of deals?

The league is obviously thinking about, it given the crazy numbers. “We’re seeing that ceiling go higher,” said NFL EVP/Media Distribution Hans Schroeder. “... We’re going to work to figure out how we can grow it and make it an even more special day for our fans.”

Could there be a holiday package of NFL games?

My colleague Austin Karp this week talked to some sports media sources who think there could be a carveout for some NFL holiday package, perhaps the three Thanksgiving games and two Christmas games. It would significantly decrease the value of core broadcast packages that have long contained Thanksgiving, but it would fetch a big number from a streamer. With Netflix’s love of “events,” that sort of package could make sense for co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria. Bajaria has said she likes the 4:25pm ET Sunday window, but the league would be hard pressed to leave broadcast TV for that sort of tonnage over a full season. A smaller package that Netflix would pay big bucks for could be a better fit. Or, instead of cannibalizing Thanksgiving, there’s a different holiday package made up out of a second Black Friday game or altogether new windows.

Or maybe it’s YouTube? The company showed it wants to be the business of live events, like the Brazil game in Week 1, and has the deep connection to the league through a long-term NFL Sunday Ticket deal. And unlike Netflix, YouTube has also shown it doesn’t mind being in front of a paywall for the games.

But the streamer’s check would indeed have to be massive to get holiday games off of broadcast TV. As Schroeder said this week after the huge numbers came in, it’s about “the power of broadcast and the reach of broadcast” that made it happen.

If Thanksgiving stays on broadcast TV, which teams should networks target?

Having the league’s two premier TV draws helped create a regular-season record for the NFL. But can you do that every year? What teams will networks go after?

“It was entirely strategically correct to really go for it this year and try to get the biggest numbers you could,” said Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ president of insights and analytics. “Next year, we’re going to have to think about how aggressive we want to be, because at some level it is a little bit zero sum.” There are only so many big games to go around. Mega-ratings on Thanksgiving come at the expense of a Sunday slate somewhere else, even if it’s impossible to precisely pinpoint the downside. “There will have to be some thought given to not necessarily going with the biggest game available, but going with something that’s going to drive a lot of viewership and drive revenue -- it’s a unique revenue opportunity as it kicks off the holiday shopping season -- but without leaving ourselves shorthanded at 4:25pm [Sundays],” Mulvihill said.

CBS Sports President David Berson said his team will always lobby for the best possible game on Thanksgiving. “I don’t know that’s really gonna change,” he said, while noting the importance of keeping strong games on Sundays. “Everything’s a tradeoff, so there’s a lot more research and data and science that goes into it nowadays.”

• Peacock is bringing a twist to its latest NFL alt-cast, as Sunday’s Texans-Chiefs game will get a stream centered just on some of Bravo’s top reality stars, notes SBJ’s Austin Karp.
• With owner Lawrence Stroll spending heavily, Aston Martin sits seventh out of 10 teams heading into the season’s final Grand Prix at Abu Dhabi this weekend, and the team is already putting the full force of its research and development efforts toward ’26, writes SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• Inter Miami announced a group of experiential businesses, Fever, PopStroke and Toroverde, will be the first tenants in the 131-acre Miami Freedom Park, notes SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
• This week’s Talent Pool agency roundup from SBJ’s Irving Hilario-Mejia features a host of signings among the college ranks.