On a November morning in Los Angeles, FOX Sports CEO Eric Shanks sat down with the hosts of FOX & FRIENDS to announce something that reaches far beyond the broadcast booth: a $500,000 commitment to Boys & Girls Clubs of America that will touch the lives of more than 26,000 young people across the United States. The timing is deliberate. As America prepares to host the largest FIFA World Cup in history in 2026, FOX Sports is betting that the tournament's true legacy won't be measured only by the roar of the crowd or the drama on the pitch, but by the concrete opportunities created for youth in communities nationwide.
This investment represents something increasingly rare in sports media: a major broadcaster treating its tournament coverage as a platform for systemic social change rather than merely entertainment. The partnership between FOX Sports, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and the nonprofit organization Common Goal is designed as a multi-year initiative that goes beyond a single donation. The $500,000 will expand soccer programming at BGCA clubs, train coaches, create referee job opportunities for club teens, and fund Soccer Forward Fests—community celebration events designed by U.S. Soccer to deepen engagement with the sport.
"Soccer can open up new opportunities for youth," said Jim Clark, president and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of America, capturing the philosophy that drives this collaboration. For young people in underserved communities, access to organized sports is often a luxury. This initiative removes that barrier, bringing coaching, competition, and the kind of structured mentorship that research shows can change trajectories.
The 2026 World Cup commitment builds on work FOX Sports undertook during Qatar 2022 and the Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023. The company has made Common Goal's 1% pledge—committing one percent of tournament coverage to tell stories of soccer for social good—a standard part of its coverage. That's journalism with purpose, threading the narrative of the sport itself with the narratives of the people it touches.
Beyond youth soccer access, FOX Sports is investing heavily in mental health through "Create the Space," an initiative launched during the 2023 Women's World Cup in partnership with U.S. Women's National Team defender Naomi Girma. The program delivers youth-focused mental wellness training to soccer organizations across North America and the Caribbean—recognizing that what young athletes need isn't just a ball and a field, but tools to understand their own emotional wellbeing. As Girma noted, "This support allows us to make even stronger and more meaningful impact and change for good."
The company is also channeling investment into the next generation of sports professionals through FOX Sports University, now in its 19th year. The program connects college students with real-world industry experience and career pathways, reaching more than 500 students annually across dozens of universities. Leading up to 2026, the program expanded to include partnerships with 20 colleges on World Cup-focused programming and a nationwide campus speaker series featuring FOX Sports broadcasters and executives.
What emerges from these initiatives is a vision of what major sports broadcasters could become: not extractors of value from communities, but participants in building something lasting. The 2026 World Cup will generate enormous profits and viewership. But if this commitment holds true, it will also generate opportunity—for young people learning the game, for coaches developing their craft, for teens entering the workforce, and for entire communities discovering that soccer, at its best, is about far more than the score.