The first round of the 2026 World Cup proves that the tournament works. But while soccer was being played on the field, a silent revolution was putting an end to decades of television monopoly in Brazil.
Two simultaneous phenomena define this World Cup. The first: contrary to all the pessimistic predictions, the tournament is a success. The numbers are unequivocal: the stadiums are packed, goals are being scored, and star players are stepping up at just the right moment. The second: while soccer was taking place on American fields, a silent and irreversible revolution was putting an end to decades of television monopoly in Brazil. These are two intertwined stories, but they must be examined separately in order to be understood together.
The World Cup That Wasn't Supposed to Work Out, But Did
The arguments against this World Cup were compelling. Prohibitive ticket prices. Trump’s anti-immigration policies making it difficult for fans to enter the United States. An American public that has historically been indifferent to soccer. An bloated tournament with 48 teams, including those with no tradition and no fan base. The perfect recipe for failure. Well, that failure never materialized.
The first round saw 75 goals scored in 24 games, for an average of 3.13 goals per game. This is the highest total for an opening round of a World Cup since the 1958 tournament. The average stadium attendance was 99.4%, with eight games playing to capacity, including Brazil’s match. If this pace continues, the tournament will surpass 6.8 million fans in attendance, making it the second-largest World Cup in history in terms of average attendance per match. These aren’t the numbers of a World Cup that went wrong. They’re the numbers of a World Cup that surprised everyone.
The top scorers show up at just the right moment. Messi scored a hat trick and tied Miroslav Klose as the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history. Germany routed Curaçao 7–1 with an efficiency reminiscent of the best versions of the German machine. But it wasn’t all blowouts. That is precisely the point that critics of the 48-team format failed to predict. Cape Verde, making its World Cup debut, held Spain to a scoreless draw and introduced the world to goalkeeper Vozinha. The Democratic Republic of the Congo snatched a draw against Portugal. South Korea came from behind to beat the Czech Republic. Ivory Coast defeated Ecuador. Of the first 16 matches played, the favorites stumbled on ten occasions. Only 37.5% of them lived up to their status as favorites on the field. The expansion of the tournament did not dilute the quality of the big matchups. It added something the previous format did not deliver: real unpredictability, with lesser-known teams capable of making history rather than just filling out the group stage.
To be perfect, the World Cup would need two things that are beyond the reach of any regulation. Italy, absent through its own fault, is a sporting tragedy with no regulatory solution. And Brazil, which has yet to get going. The Brazilian national team opened the tournament with a draw against Morocco that brought more anxiety than confidence. But that’s a topic for the next chapter.
This World Cup also revealed something that the soccer calendar stubbornly ignores: physical conditioning has become a decisive factor in the outcome. The African national teams were the most eloquent proof of this. As long as they had the legs to run, they held their own against the European favorites with surprising intensity. When their stamina gave out, the results followed. But the most revealing data comes from the other side: European players arrived at the World Cup right after the end of an exhausting season, with more than ten months of competition behind them, and yet they still displayed an impressive level of physical and technical skill. This is no coincidence. It is the result of infrastructure, sports science, and professionalism that goes far beyond the ninety minutes. The lesson is clear and uncomfortable: in a World Cup year, the European season does not end in May. In practice, it doesn’t end at all. It simply shifts to a different stage.
There is also a measure of engagement that FIFA’s official reports rarely highlight, but which the market follows closely: the volume of sports betting. In Brazil alone, the matches in this World Cup are expected to generate approximately 30 billion reais in bets throughout the tournament. In just one month of competition, that figure approaches the annual GDP of entire countries. For betting platforms, the World Cup is also a resounding success. The aim here is not to assess the social effects of this phenomenon—a legitimate and necessary debate that deserves its own discussion. What the numbers reveal, from a strictly market-oriented perspective, is that fans’ engagement with the tournament extends far beyond the stands and television screens. It translates into financial involvement, sustained attention game by game, and interest that spans every stage of the tournament. No other global entertainment product achieves this level of engagement. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes about the power of the World Cup.
The internet has shown its power. And TV will never be the same again
While goals were being scored in American stadiums, another game was taking place in Brazil. We cannot declare television a loser. But what we have seen in Brazilian fans’ viewing habits is clear evidence that the internet has arrived to compete on equal footing, with numbers that no TV executive can ignore.
CazéTV, Casimiro Miguel’s YouTube channel, is the only Brazilian broadcaster with the rights to air all 104 games of the tournament, broadcasting them for free. This is not just an operational detail. It is a structural shift in the business model that has dominated sports broadcasting in Brazil for decades. During the Brazilian national team’s opener against Morocco, the channel reached an estimated peak of 14 million concurrent viewers, setting the highest viewership record ever recorded for a live sports broadcast on YouTube. In total, the match accumulated 56 million views between the live broadcast and post-game coverage.
On the other hand, Globo saw a 33% drop in viewership compared to the opening match of the 2022 World Cup, marking the network’s worst performance in broadcasting Brazilian national team matches at World Cups in its history. But the numbers need to be interpreted with caution. The network still reached 50 million people during Brazil’s game—across free-to-air TV, SporTV, and GE TV—and maintained a 51% share. This isn’t the end of a model. It’s a clear sign of a trend: the audience that was once concentrated on a single channel is now spread across platforms. Globo remains a major player. But it is no longer the sole benchmark. And this shift—though subtle in today’s numbers—points toward a direction that cannot be reversed.
There is a perfect symbol for this transition. This World Cup marks the first World Cup in more than four decades without Galvão Bueno’s commentary on Globo. The commentator has moved to SBT. The voice that Brazil has associated with World Cup soccer for generations has left its usual spot, and the world has moved on without a hitch. More than just the departure of a professional, this represents the end of an era in which the experience of watching the World Cup was shaped by a single, dominant, and irreplaceable figure.
The digital model is here to stay. But it still has ground to cover. This World Cup clearly exposed two limitations that the internet will need to resolve in order to consolidate its position: the quality of the broadcast image, which at many points fell short of traditional television signals, and the broadcast delay—that lag of a few seconds that causes fans watching on their cell phones to hear the goal from the noise on the street before seeing it on the screen. These are problems with known technological solutions. They are not permanent obstacles. But during this World Cup, they showed that the digital experience is not yet on par with television. It is a vibrant, growing, and legitimate alternative that, to be fully established, will need to give fans what they want most: the goal the moment it happens, with the clarity that soccer deserves.
The new language and the old drivel from the commentators
The key difference between CazéTV and the traditional model isn’t just the platform. It’s the language. Gone is the formal, hierarchical narration. In its place are relaxed commentary, humor, genuine reactions, and the feeling of watching the game with a group of friends. This isn’t just an aesthetic detail. It’s a paradigm shift in what the audience—especially younger generations—expects from a sports broadcast.
The internet has overtaken TV. Influencers have overtaken traditional journalists. Globo itself, by creating GE TV on YouTube, sought not only to take advantage of the world’s most popular streaming platform, but also to offer viewers a more casual and relaxed style. It’s true that during this World Cup, GE TV is broadcasting the games only through the Globoplay app, due to Cazé TV’s exclusive rights to broadcast on YouTube. But this new approach by Globo on GE TV had already been evident in previous broadcasts.
However, whether in the more understated formats or in those geared more toward entertainment, there is one thing all channels, platforms, and broadcasters have in common: former players serving as commentators. Both on television and online, this group of former athletes continues to command the same authority as always, lecturing on how to shoot, pass, press, and win one-on-one situations. With one detail that sports history won’t let us forget: when they were playing, most of them didn’t do half of what they now demand of today’s athletes. There’s a certain comfort in the irony of seeing mediocre players from the past now lecturing coaches and professionals who would outplay them on any field.
It’s a familiar pattern. The former player spends the entire game going easy on his former teammates, attributing every mistake to a technical reason that the players themselves wouldn’t use, and every success to a level of insight they never possessed when they were on the field. They speak as if the game they’re commentating on were a logic problem that anyone wearing soccer cleats could solve. The shift in platform was radical, but the corporate commentator is still there.
The paradigm that will never return
What this World Cup has revealed is not a fleeting disruption. It is a new, permanent reality. CazéTV secured an estimated 2 billion reais in sponsorship revenue for this World Cup, with brands such as Ambev, Coca-Cola, iFood, Mercado Livre, and Itaú making up its portfolio. The model is no longer experimental. It is structural. It is profitable. It is unavoidable.
From now on, every World Cup, every tournament, and every major event broadcast in Brazil will be like this: distributed across platforms, contested in different languages, and consumed on different screens by audiences that do not completely overlap. Television isn’t dead—far from it. But total exclusivity as a business model is a thing of the past. What this World Cup has shown, with concrete numbers, is that the internet has gone from being an alternative to becoming a key player—a parallel and growing force that, World Cup after World Cup, will redefine the influence of each platform.
Soccer won. The fans won. Choice won. What came to an end with this World Cup wasn’t just a broadcast contract. It was a model of power over the collective experience of a country that, for decades, had collectively chosen the same channel to share the same moments. Now, each person chooses where, how, and with whom to watch. And that is, at the same time, both a victory and a loss. A victory in autonomy. A loss of something that will never return: the feeling that all of Brazil was looking in the same direction.
The 2026 World Cup is coming together. On the field, Brazil still needs to do its part. But off the field, it has already shown that it knows exactly where it wants to be: in front of a screen of its own choosing, using the language it prefers, without asking anyone’s permission.
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