FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s shoulder-shrugging defence of ticket pricing at this World Cup contained an aside that likely portends his organisation’s future broadcast strategy.

“If we were selling our TV rights to pay-TV, like everyone else, we would generate four times as much revenue,” Infantino said.

His intent was to highlight FIFA’s defence of free access to the World Cup, but Infantino’s intentions were buried within. He knows the World Cup would be worth more if it were sold more aggressively, as evidenced by this year’s ticketing strategy, and the organisation’s choice to keep much of the tournament free-to-air now has a public price tag.

FIFA will earn around $4.2bn in broadcast revenue from the 2026 World Cup, and if Infantino’s throwaway comment has any substance to it, the goal for future World Cups could well be close to $17bn, almost twice its entire gross earnings for the 2023-26 cycle.

Infantino would likely have tested these waters by now if not for the unfortunate inheritance of broadcast deals struck before his tenure. In particular, a four-tournament deal across Latin America with Televisa subsidiary Mountrigi Management runs through to the end of the 2030 World Cup. It is horrendously undervalued.

Without a blank global slate, Infantino has had to work within the broadcast structure passed down to him from the Blatter regime: a piecemeal patchwork of deals in individual territories or continents, some short, some long, some with agencies and some with broadcasters, but all worth less than they should be in the mind’s eye of a FIFA president who can’t help but want more.

He wouldn’t be the first.

Back in 1996, Sepp Blatter’s FIFA cashed in on the World Cup’s popularity by selling global broadcast rights to the 2002 and 2006 tournaments for $1.6bn, an increase of 1,000% per tournament compared with the $79m earned from France 98. It achieved that increase by selling the rights to ISL, which sublicensed the European package to Kirch for around $750m.

Both companies bought the rights with the express intention of turning the World Cup into a pay-television product. Agencies and subscription broadcasters were to act as gatekeepers in various territories, selling matches on to free-to-air broadcasters only where required by law.

Beyond listed-events legislation, FIFA, ISL and Kirch’s vision was for the World Cup to become a premium pay-television product, sold at much higher prices and controlled by the likes of Sky, Fox and ESPN, the new giants of global media.

The plan failed. The likes of Sky in the UK baulked at the eye-watering asking prices and, as a result, the World Cup remained a free-to-air property across Europe, albeit at much higher fees. FIFA brought the rights back in house for the 2010 World Cup unscathed, having pocketed the agency cash and set a permanently higher bar for free-to-air entry.

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Ever since, the World Cup has continued to prove why those broadcasters were expected to pay so much, and the 2026 tournament has reinforced the point further.

On television, the World Cup is delivering audiences that nothing else can. In the UK, ITV’s coverage of Mexico v South Africa peaked at 7.7 million across ITV1 and ITVX and averaged 6.6 million from kick-off to final whistle.

In France, M6’s France v Senegal coverage reached 14 million viewers and a 61.4% audience share. In Germany, ARD said its first 14 matches kicking off before 2am averaged seven million viewers, while Germany v Curaçao drew 24 million.

Even in Italy, a country that hasn’t had a dog in the fight for 12 years now, the World Cup is the summer’s main event. Rai has drawn sizeable audiences for neutral matches, with France v Senegal reaching almost six million viewers, Mexico v South Africa drawing almost five million, Belgium v Egypt drawing a similar audience and England v Croatia drawing 4.5 million viewers.

No matter the controversy surrounding this World Cup, audiences have flocked to matches in droves regardless of the teams or the time zone. Infantino has already pushed live attendance to its breaking point with FIFA’s aggressive ticketing strategy, so why wouldn’t broadcast be next?

From 2034 onward, FIFA will no longer have to manoeuvre around existing World Cup broadcast deals, giving Infantino his first opportunity to explore whether a fourfold increase is possible. Given the opportunity, global streamers will clamour for the chance to act as a global gatekeeper, especially over multiple tournaments.

Netflix will sample FIFA’s wares in 2027 and 2031, having acquired rights in the US and Canada to the Women’s World Cup. The tournament is unlikely to put up the kind of numbers worthy of the price tag, thought to be well over $150m per tournament, but Netflix has invested in a relationship with FIFA and the knowledge of how a World Cup works from a streaming, production and platform perspective.

DAZN has done something similar with the Club World Cup, effectively bankrolling FIFA’s revamped tournament to create a relationship and gain a similar understanding of how a major FIFA property is delivered, as well as the benefits to be reaped once it’s over.

Of course, free-to-air broadcasters will never be fully out of the picture. In the UK and Belgium, all matches must be shown by a broadcaster meeting almost 100% household reach. In other European countries, only matches involving the national team must be shown free-to-air. It’s a crack in the door that Infantino knows is there.

The IOC already forced its way through that crack in 2015, selling Olympics rights to Discovery in a gatekeeper deal that has been renewed through the 2032 Brisbane Games.

And once Mountrigi’s deal is done after the 2030 World Cup, FIFA will be able to test the market for itself, just “like everyone else”.