The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 soccer tournament begins this Sunday, November 20, and runs until December 18 with the final at 10 a.m. ET. The event could generate as many as five billion viewers worldwide and there’s five ways you can watch the action for free.
For starters, there will be 32 teams competing in eight categories with the majority of the group matches featuring start times of 8 a.m., 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET. (The United States is in group B with England, Wales and Iran.) You can see a schedule here.
5 Ways to Watch For Free
* Your local Telemundo channel, which can be accessed with an antenna in most areas, will show 56 of the 64 games in Spanish for free; eight will be on Universo due to competing start times.
* Your local Fox network affiliate, which can also be accessed with an antenna in most areas, will have 40 English-language games for free. You can see a schedule here. (The remaining 24 games will be shown on FS1, which is available on pay TV services.)
* The Fox Sports and Fox Now apps will show the games for free, but you will need a subscription (and user name and password) to a pay TV service such as cable or satellite, or a live streaming service that carries Fox.
* Tubi, the free live streaming service owned by Fox, will offer every game of the tournament for free. However, the games will not be live on Tubi. The streamer will add replays of the games for free after they are played. They will be available on demand and part of Tubi’s free World Cup channel which also features highlights and analysis of the event.
(You have to create an account to watch the Tubi World Cup channel, but no credit card or subscription is required. You can see the channel here. In addition to the 2022 World Cup action, Tubi is showing past games and related documentaries.)
If you’re not familiar with Tubi, it’s a free streaming service available on your computer, mobile phone or streaming device, such as Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, XBox, Chromecast, Xfinity X1 and Cox set-tops, and select LG, Samsung, Hisense, Sony and Vizio Smart TVs. The Tubi lineup consists of thousands of TV shows and movies from studios such as Fox, Lionsgate, Paramount, MGM and Warner Bros.
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* The first 12 World Cup matches in Spanish (simulcast from Telemundo) will be available to Peacock subscribers on the free tier while the remaining 52 games (beginning on November 24) will be available to Peacock Premium subscribers. (Peacock Premium costs $4.99 a month.)
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— Phillip Swann
@tvanswerman