May 13 – Fox Sports has struck a new partnership with Sesame Street that will see Elmo, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and a cast of the world’s most recognisable characters land in the middle of its 2026 FIFA World Cup coverage.
From 11 June to 19 July, Sesame Street favourites will be woven into Fox’s broadcast schedule through dedicated content segments designed to broaden the tournament’s appeal beyond the traditional football audience.
Among the planned integrations are: ‘The Count Down’, in which Count von Count breaks down World Cup statistics; ‘Trash Talk’, an Oscar the Grouch-led highlight show, and ‘Broadcaster Bootcamp’, where Grover joins Fox Sports commentators to learn the nuances of calling a soccer match. Alexi Lalas is already trembling about being upstaged by Elmo.
The deal was led by Fox Sports VP of production Zac Kenworthy and Sesame Workshop VP of marketing and brand strategy Samantha Kennedy. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The 2026 World Cup is being aggressively positioned as the most-watched event in American sporting history, and capturing the family living room has become an arms race among rights holders. Sesame Street is a calculated, high-recognition shortcut into a demographic, particularly in the United States, where soccer’s audience growth is still being measured in family households rather than purist viewership.
The bigger picture is that the World Cup, once a six-week television event, is being treated by US broadcasters as a brand-building platform. Big Bird is a long way from a gimmick. It is a signal of just how seriously the American broadcasting industry is treating its potentially biggest content opportunity in a generation.
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