Fox One is rolling out new product features and enhancements as it prepares for one of its biggest stress tests since launching last year: the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“Internally, we’ve been viewing [the World Cup] as a second launch moment, and candidly, the most important product moment for us, both from a scale and ambition perspective,” Amit Dudakia, the streaming service’s head of product, told TheWrap in an interview. “The No. 1 goal I’ve set out for the team is how do you drive engagement for matches that an average soccer fan may not really want to tune into because they don’t have the context or the story arc. So that’s been a key focus for us.”
Fox executives expect to bring in at least 15 million fans to watch each U.S. match during the FIFA World Cup, with the goal of reaching 150 million combined viewers across the entire tournament. The key challenge for Fox One will be getting some of those viewers to not only stick around for other sports, but to consume the rest of the content the platform has to offer.
“What we’ve seen historically around sports viewership, particularly around NFL and college football, is that we have a ton of engagement over the Saturday and Sunday. But with the World Cup, we’re really going to start to see a lift throughout the entirety of the week,” he said. “Of course, there are going to be some folks who are just really hyper-focused and they only want the sports piece of the offering. But what we’ve found is we’re getting more and more customers who are coming in for sports and are then introduced to news. We have seen news viewership trending upward even within the sports cohort. Our goal is to not only introduce them to news but also our entertainment and podcast content.”
At the same time, Fox One has the difficult balance of serving cord-cutters and cord-nevers while trying to limit cannibalization with its parent company’s pay TV ecosystem.
“We’ve been very mindful and strategic around how we are acquiring customers. We aren’t running ads on linear and we’re being very targeted with all of our digital marketing tactics,” Dudakia said. “We actually haven’t really seen any cannibalization. It seems to be working as planned, which is great, and we’re just very agnostic. If you want to buy Fox One through the traditional pay TV ecosystem or come direct to us, that’s fine. And for those that are going through the traditional cable bundle, we consider it as a value add for those customers.”
As the World Cup kicks off June 11, Fox One will provide generative-AI powered summaries with context around why a user should follow a particular country’s team, including offensive rankings and how the team is performing.
The platform is also updating its home screen with a “Hero Spotlight,” which will put the biggest, high stakes moments front and center in an effort to make them immediate, immersive and unmissable; and launching Canvas, a new dashboard that will put everything in one convenient place.
Additionally, Fox One will offer game highlights through Key Plays Rewind and in-stream statistics and insights. It is also looking to make a more personalized multiview experience by allowing users to customize their streams, ISO camera angles and layouts.
Other Fox One features include the ability to customize and personalize notifications, keep track of live activities via iOS and connect fans with Yahoo Fantasy’s Daily Draw and Pick Em games.
The new features will roll out during the lead-up to the tournament, with the full experience available by the first match on June 11. All 104 of the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches will also stream in 4K.
Looking beyond the World Cup, Dudakia teased that the features launching will be extended to other upcoming content, such as the NFL and college football, the World Series and the midterm elections.
Fox One also plans to improve its vertical video experience, known as Shorts, on both the personalization front and how content is presented. Dudakia touted strong engagement for the offering, with short-form viewers tending to watch content more often and for longer periods of time.
As for podcasts, he acknowledged that its licensing partnership with Red Seat Ventures is still in an “experimental phase” for the time being.
“We recognize that there are some things that we need to do to not only improve the discoverability but also the awareness of that content within the product experience. So that is next up on the docket for the team,” Dudakia said. “But we do believe that there is a big opportunity in the podcast space for Fox One customers. There’s going to be a lot of work that we’ll be doing over the next quarter or so to help improve that.”
In addition to using AI for personalization, Dudakia also sees an opportunity for Fox One to leverage the technology to rethink how users discover its content by using tailored and personalized prompts from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot.
“To me, a great experience is I get context with a GenAI summary and I would also get all of the content that’s relevant to that and helps tell that story. So it could be short-form content that’s been clipped leveraging AI from our studio shows around an analysis for a match or pre or post game analysis alongside the relevant highlights and then also prompting the user with follow-up questions,” he explained. “There’s something about tapping into a user’s curiosity to help drive the discovery experience and I think AI is going to really help enable that.”
Fox has also struck an agreement to integrate Kalshi’s prediction data into the platform.
“We’re having conversations with them to discuss what that looks like within the product experience and where that lives, so there’ll be more coming on that front,” Dudakia added. “But it just all comes down to we’re trying to really rethink that discovery experience and the way to do that is show people the most relevant content and give them a reason why they should care about it.”
In addition to expanding its product features, Fox One is also growing its distribution footprint. The service is currently available through YouTube’s Primetime Channels and The Roku Channel, as well as in bundles with ESPN, Fox Nation and Big Ten+.
“We’re going to continue to refine, optimize, and make sure that we’re positioning it in a place where there’s a real value proposition for our customers or prospective customers and they understand what that value proposition is,” Dudakia said. “At the end of the day, we’re certainly exploring [more partnerships], but it has to make sense strategically for us long-term and for the fans and customers.”
Dudakia didn’t rule out the possibility of Fox One taking advantage of the channel store model in the future, but suggested it would stick to serving audiences content directly as opposed to becoming an aggregator in the short-term.
“There is so much fragmentation today for customers and it’s really challenging. So I hope that is the direction that it eventually ends up going for fans and they can get flavors of that whether it’s through Amazon or YouTube or Roku channels,” he added. “But I also think, to some extent, there’s just a lot more control around the experiences that you’re able to deliver from a product perspective. We always want to try to be able to have customers come direct to us whenever we can.”
The World Cup kicks off June 11 and will run through July 19.
The post Fox One Prepares for Its ‘2nd Launch Moment’ With the FIFA World Cup appeared first on TheWrap.
