Dazn has locked in an exclusive option on the global streaming rights for the 2029 men's Club World Cup, cementing what is rapidly becoming one of the most consequential and quietly unsettling partnerships in world football. This is not a minor rights deal. It is confirmation that a loss-making, Saudi-backed streaming company has effectively become Fifa's financial lifeline for its most ambitious and controversial project, and that arrangement is only getting deeper. The question worth asking is not whether Dazn wants the 2029 tournament. It clearly does. The question is what it means for the rest of us that it keeps getting what it wants.
How We Got Here: A Rescue Act Nobody Else Would Do
Cast your mind back to the chaos that surrounded the 2025 Club World Cup rights. The expanded 32-team tournament, staged in the United States, was supposed to be Fifa's great commercial leap forward. What actually happened was an embarrassment. Linear broadcasters turned their noses up at it. Other streamers passed. Apple TV held serious talks with Fifa over a global streaming deal and then walked out after a disagreement over what the rights were actually worth. That last detail matters more than it might seem: when Apple, a company with more cash reserves than most countries, tells you your asking price is too high, you have a problem.
Dazn stepped in. It agreed to pay $1bn (around £745m) for global rights to the 2025 tournament, a figure that in effect bankrolled Fifa's entire $1bn prize fund. Chelsea, who lifted the trophy with Reece James holding it aloft at MetLife Stadium in front of a watching Donald Trump, took home around $114m of that. The whole thing only worked because Dazn was there. That is a remarkable amount of leverage to hand to a single streaming company, and Fifa appears not just comfortable with that dynamic but keen to deepen it further.
The Saudi Connection That Nobody Talks About Enough
Dazn's 2025 intervention did not come from nowhere. It was facilitated, at least in part, by Surj Sports Investment, a Saudi group, purchasing a 10% stake in the company. That purchase provided the financial architecture that made the $1bn bid possible. If you were already paying attention to the creeping Gulification of global football governance, this is another data point worth filing. It is not just about clubs being bought or tournaments being hosted in the Gulf. It is about the financial infrastructure of the sport's governing institutions becoming entangled with Saudi capital, one "strategic investment" at a time.
We are not making a crude accusation here. Dazn is a global operation with hundreds of millions of registered users and a presence in markets far beyond the Middle East. But the line between Saudi investment enabling a broadcasting deal that enables Fifa's flagship tournament is not a long one. These things connect, and it is worth being clear-eyed about that, especially when the 2029 host is likely to be Morocco, whose King has a well-documented close relationship with Fifa president Gianni Infantino. The geography of power in this sport is shifting, and Dazn is not a passive observer of that process.
Losing Money, Buying Influence
Here is the part that should genuinely give you pause. Dazn has more than 300 million registered users worldwide. It is also a loss-making business. Its 2025 accounts showed operating losses increasing from $772.9m to $939.8m in a single year. That is not a company tightening its belt; it is a company bleeding money faster than the year before, and it is doing so while signing billion-dollar deals and securing options on future tournaments. The 2029 rights deal value has not been disclosed, but the pattern is clear enough: Dazn is buying access, influence, and positioning, not profit.
There is a version of this story where that is fine. Sports rights are long-term plays; you build the subscriber base, you monetise later. But Dazn has been saying something like that for years, and the losses keep growing. For football fans, the more immediate concern is what this means for access. [Fifa's relationship with women's football has recently shown some encouraging signs](/uprise/football/fifa-increases-preparation-money-for-womens-world-cup-to-match), but the commercial architecture being built around the Club World Cup points in a different direction entirely. Global exclusive streaming, controlled by one platform, means that if you do not subscribe, you do not watch. Full stop.
The 2029 Tournament Is a Mess Nobody Wants to Admit
While the streaming rights picture is apparently clear enough for Dazn to option, everything else about 2029 remains genuinely unsettled. There is no confirmed host. No agreed format. No settled decision on whether the tournament expands to 48 teams, though those discussions have been going on for at least two years. Planning has stalled badly, and the reason for that stall is the political fallout from Infantino's aborted World Cup sell-off proposal, which pushed the European Football Clubs lobby group to threaten pulling its support entirely altogether. In a letter to Fifa that the Guardian obtained, that same group expressed what it called "serious concern and disappointment" at delays in paying $250m in solidarity money owed to clubs from the 2025 tournament, more than a year after the competition ended.
That is not a small grievance. That is the clubs that make the competition worth watching telling Fifa that it has not paid what it promised. Relations between the two sides are said to have improved since Infantino shelved his Fifa Forward Enterprise plan, but a proposed joint venture to manage the Club World Cup's commercial operations has still not been finalised. That deal may be parked until after the Fifa presidential election in March. So: no host, no format, no solidarity payments, no joint venture. But the streaming rights? Those are sorted.
Where Will 2029 Actually Be Played?
Morocco is the strong favourite, assuming Infantino wins re-election in March, which is itself no certainty but hardly a shock either. The 2030 men's World Cup co-host is well-positioned geographically, has the infrastructure ambitions, and has the personal backing of Infantino, whose relationship with King Mohammed VI is one of the more openly acknowledged factors in Fifa's hosting decisions.
The US was considered a genuine contender but its case weakened considerably when Fifa awarded hosting rights to the inaugural women's Club World Cup to American soil instead, as the Guardian revealed. A joint bid between Morocco and Spain has also been floated. Portugal, the third major co-host for 2030, is reportedly reluctant. It is a picture of vague possibilities and political manoeuvring that does not inspire confidence that 2029 will be any smoother to organise than 2025 was. [Chelsea's Champions League form this season](/uprise/football/glitch-in-chelseas-coding-costs-alonso-while-resurgent-spurs-are) suggests they will not be defending that trophy with the same ease either.
Our Verdict
Dazn's option on 2029 tells us everything about where football's power is pooling. A loss-making platform, part-funded by Saudi investment, is now the essential financial partner for the world's governing body on its most ambitious project. Fifa needed someone to say yes when everyone else said no, and it found a company willing to keep saying yes regardless of the balance sheet consequences. That is an extraordinary position of dependency for Fifa to have accepted, and it has consequences for every fan who will one day be told to open their wallet to a single streaming app if they want to watch the best club football on the planet. The 2029 Club World Cup does not have a host, a format, or a functioning political consensus behind it. What it does have is a broadcaster. Make of that what you will.