Vertical Content is King at 2026 World Cup 

Spain was rightly crowned as world champions for their heroics on the field. But they weren’t the only winners of the tournament.

Broadcasters across the globe reached record audiences, whether through traditional broadcasts, streaming, or their own apps. In the US alone, the final drew 63 million viewers across Fox, Telemundo, and Peacock, the largest audience ever for a soccer match in the country. 

It was the biggest World Cup in history, growing from 32 teams playing 64 matches in 2022 to 48 teams playing a massive 104 matches in 2026, spread across three host countries for the first time. Naturally, more games and more broadcasters meant more content. 

Across all of WSC Sports’ broadcaster partners worldwide, that demand translated into 134,000+ videos produced over the tournament, a 322% increase from the 2022 World Cup.

Creating content at this scale changed how publishers distributed it. One of the clearest signs of that shift was the increased use of vertical video. 9×16 output rose 788% over the 2022 tournament, more than twice the pace of overall production. It also soared past horizontal’s 254% growth in the same period. 

Vertical moved beyond social. Broadcasters were building it into their apps, and streaming and OTT platforms and other digital platforms.

That expansion across platforms was particularly visible at the final game of the tournament, when world attention was concentrated on a single game. In 2022, vertical made up 25% of the Final’s output. In 2026, that number reached 40%, while horizontal’s share fell from 65% in 2022 to 58% this year.

At the one match where every rights holder had the most riding on getting it right, vertical had closed most of the gap. 

The Always-on World Cup

Throughout the 39 days of World Cup play, fans moved through a continuous stream of updates before, during, and after games. 

Playing in North America put the tournament on a schedule that much of the world couldn’t watch live, especially during the group stage. Matches often kicked off after midnight in the UK, with some starting as late as 3 a.m.

For fans across Europe and beyond, streaming and recaps were the primary ways to experience the tournament. As the knockout stage arrived, kickoffs shifted earlier, and more fans could watch live, whether on traditional broadcast or streaming. 

Broadcasters filled the gap for those who couldn’t watch live games, with everything from short clips of key moments, to condensed match replays.

Chief among these was a format built specifically for the mobile experience: the story. Unlike a typical social post that stays up indefinitely, a story surfaces for a window of time, then it’s gone, built to be caught in the moment rather than archived for later. 

A fan can scroll through as much or as little as they want. They can catch the buildup, game action or post game reaction, taking in whatever interests them the most.  

In all, broadcasters created more than 12,500 stories over the tournament using the WSC platform, drawing close to 190 million views. 

That kind of scale only works with automation, and since the 2022 World Cup,videos created from automated rules on the WSC Sports platform grew 237%.  

Coverage didn’t stop at a broadcaster’s own app or website either. Highlights and stories moved across partner sites, were hosted in search platforms like Google, scoring apps, and shared by individual creators, all beyond a rights holder’s own channels. For many rights holders, showing up everywhere was step one. Getting fans to follow them home was the real goal. 

This World Cup felt different from the start. What people felt most was its presence. It was everywhere. Wherever you went, whatever screen you looked at, it was there. The World Cup had become something closer to a constant presence. 

Horizontal Video Still Matters 

For years, horizontal was the default format for sports video while vertical lived primarily on social. By the 2026 Final, horizontal still accounted for the larger share of output, 58% against vertical’s 40%, but it no longer had the field to itself.

Automation made it possible to serve both content ratios at scale. Producing every format from the same footage meant rights holders could cover the same tournament across any formats and platforms they needed, giving fans more ways to experience the game wherever they happened to be watching.

If 2022 was when vertical video first showed up at the World Cup, 2026 is when it was crowned king.