Inside FOX Sports’ 2026 World Cup Plan: Producer Zac Kenworthy on 104 Matches, 48 Teams & One Massive Broadcast Challenge
Never mind the blood, sweat, and tears that will surely be shed on North American soccer fields over the next four weeks: World Cup boggles the mind through numbers alone. Starting June 11 in Mexico City, 48 teams from around the globe will go toe-to-toe in 104 FIFA-authorized matches over 39 days in Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The first U.S. game is against Paraguay in Inglewood, California, one of 11 host cities located in the United States. Ratings will likely be prodigious, judging by the 2022 World Cup, which reportedly generated the highest TV viewership in history, with an estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide watching the matches.
FOX Sports vice-president Zac Kenworthy, who previously produced Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup games in Russia and Qatar, runs the network’s U.S. coverage out of its Los Angeles-based headquarters. “I don’t think anyone at Fox Sports has dealt with anything on this scale,” he says. “It’s basically an entire NFL season boiled down into 39 days. For me, it’s like being shot out of a cannon.”
Speaking from his office in L.A., Kenworthy describes the network’s high-tech virtual studio and explains how his team, numbering more than 1,200 below-the-line artisans, plans to take on the big matches while shining a light on the sport’s famously passionate fans.
When you produced World Cups in Qatar and Russia, there were only 32 teams and one host country. Have you had to rethink your approach to accommodate the expansion to 48 teams across three countries?
Looking back to those previous World Cups, the beauty of those tournaments was that we could pick one iconic spot—along the ocean front in Qatar, in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow—and you’re there [the whole time]. You have a home base. We’d always looked at these previous World Cups as 32 characters—the 32 nations competing— and then the 33rd character was the host country. This time around, it’s about the 48 teams that are playing in the competition, and then that 49th character, we think, is the fandom.
How do you bring that fandom alive for the viewer?
The United States is such a multicultural place; the diaspora from all these countries living here is going to come out and show up for their teams. Every day, we’ll be looking at the marquee matchup. If it’s Day 3, Brazil versus Morocco, we know the fans in New York will be great because whenever Brazil is on air, people want to watch. There’s a Bosnian community in and around St. Louis, so why is that important for the team to have a home base there? Things like that become touchstones beyond the game.
So you’ll be scaling up for specific matches?
Yeah. That’s not to say we won’t be at every venue. For all 104 matches, our commentators, our play-by-play commentator, and our color commentator will be at the venue. But then we’ll also be picking the marquee match, where we’ll have a set both inside and outside the stadium. It’s about picking moments when we want to have a larger on-site footprint to complement what we’re doing back in L.A.
What’s the plan for covering the action on the field?
When it comes to the match itself—and this is one of the unusual things about working with FIFA—it’s a world feed that goes out to all the rights holders, almost like the Olympics, where everyone around the world gets the same feed. In terms of our own cameras being in stadiums, they’re not. But we work very closely with FIFA and their broadcast partners at HBS.
HBS—Host Broadcast Services—controls the sound and camera crews capturing the action inside the stadium?
Exactly. HBS does an incredible job with its World Cup coverage, and FIFA is very hands-on. They want what someone sees in Spain to be exactly the same product you see in the United States or South Africa.
What about locker-room interviews?
In the past, FIFA was maybe a little more reticent to allow that because broaching that request for access with different cultures across the world and different federations can be tricky. They have their own rules. We’ve peeled that back a little bit, starting in Qatar, having a camera inside the locker room for about five minutes before the players actually go to the pitch for warm-ups.
And the fan-focused stuff?
We want to push the envelope when it comes to aerial coverage and spider-cams, and they’ve been great about working with us on them. When a match reaches a high level of popularity, we’d like to figure out ways to get aerial coverage and helicopter coverage so you can see buses arriving and get that proper buildup to when the teams are competing in the stadium.
You have to hit the ground running on June 11. What kind of pre-production have you done to prepare?
A lot of that hard work really started during the World Cup draw in December. Once you have your roadmap and know what teams are facing each other, then it becomes a lot easier.
How so?
Our research teams were able to flag storylines they think are worth tackling, so now it’s about getting boots on the ground, collecting interviews, and working with the [regional football] federations. We had a group of camera people on the ground in Argentina and Brazil collecting interviews with players, but also covering a bit of the cultural relevance. Especially the 2022 World Cup-winning Argentina, what did Diego Maradona mean to that country in the 80s and 90s? And then exploring star player Lionel Messi getting over the hump, and what the mood is on the ground, and how many fans are actually traveling to the United States to watch the matches.
Why did you decide to make the fans and their cultures such an integral part of your overall storytelling?
Because we recognize that 104 matches are a lot of soccer. The majority of people who tune in—and we know this from our research—may not have watched a soccer game in four years since the last World Cup because that’s how much the audience grows for a major event like this. So we have to be smart about finding a balance between telling the soccer stories and covering the games, but also exploring the cultural pieces that maybe grow beyond soccer, whether that’s food or fashion or hotbeds of culture in these [host] cities
In terms of technology, have you developed new tools to present graphics and featurettes?
Yes. At our production hub here in LA, we have what we call Stage B, a state-of-the-art, fully immersive augmented-reality volume space. If you’ve ever watched The Mandalorian, they use the “volume” so you can be on whatever planet. Stage B is essentially that, but in a live studio setting. We think it’s going to be one of the stars of our coverage because we can show off these matches more than we have in the past by fully integrating stats and information from FIFA and HBS into our set. And then we’re going to bring you the fandom. But for the hardened soccer fan, we’ll be able to display information about the matches in a way the viewer at home has never seen before.
Professionally, you clearly connect with soccer, dating back to 2012 when you joined FOX Sports. But on a personal level, when did you become a fan?
1990 was really the first World Cup that sucked me in. I remember watching it with my dad—this was in Italy—and I think we only had three channels at the time. Growing up in a foreign country, the World Cup was something that really united me and my dad that summer. It felt like something I’d never seen before. and for me, every World Cup since then has had its own heartbeat, its own identity.
Soccer has slowly been gaining momentum in the United States, but everywhere else in the world, kids really seem to love their “football.”
It’s pretty cool when I think about this younger generation who are the age I was when I was first got captivated. I think there’s going to be thousands of kids around this country, when day 40 rolls around, they’re going to wake up and say “Where‘s the World Cup? Why is it over?” Because you become so accustomed to consuming it every day, the World Cup always leaves you wanting more.
Featured image: LUSAIL CITY, QATAR – DECEMBER 18: Lionel Messi of Argentina runs with a ball during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Final match between Argentina and France at Lusail Stadium on December 18, 2022 in Lusail City, Qatar. (Photo by Stefan Matzke – sampics/Corbis via Getty Images)
