Interview by Jonathan Kersting
What if the best seat for the 2026 FIFA World Cup isn’t in the stadium, but right on your couch?
In this episode of TechVibe, Jonathan Kersting talks with Vito Forlenza, VP of Sports and Entertainment at Comcast, and Kelly Wright, Director of Sports Marketing at Comcast, about how Xfinity is preparing to turn World Cup viewing into a full-on immersive experience.
With the largest World Cup ever kicking off across North America, featuring 48 teams and 104 games, Comcast is bringing serious technology to the pitch. Vito and Kelly detail how Xfinity is making matches easier to find, faster to watch and more exciting to experience, whether fans are tuning in English or Spanish, watching live, catching up on highlights or building their own sports command center at home.
Hear how Comcast is using AI-powered catch-up highlights to help fans jump straight to goals, penalties, corners and other big moments. They also explain how multi-view lets viewers watch up to four live events at once, so you can follow World Cup action without missing MLB, WNBA, golf, F1 or other favorite sports.
And yes, the tech gets even cooler. Comcast is delivering all 104 matches in real-time 4K with Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos sound and low latency, plus a new Smart Boost Wi-Fi feature designed to keep your stream from getting tackled by busy home internet traffic.
From kickoff to extra time, this episode scores big for anyone who loves sports, technology and a front-row seat without the sunburn.
Transcript:
Rumor has it a big thing is coming to the world, in particular North America, this summer. I'm talking about the twenty twenty-six FIFA World Cup. Hey, this is Jonathan Kersting with the Pittsburgh Technology Council and TechVibe, and the World Cup is literally a unifying thing. I've never seen a sporting event quite like this anywhere before, And today I'm talking to my friends over at Comcast that will make viewing the World Cup something that's pretty spectacular.
And it's not just watching it, it's like experiencing it, and dare I say, olé, olé, olé right from my couch, 'cause that's where I'll be watching it. I know people are dying to get tickets and have some fun to go out there, but I think a lot of us, of course, will be watching from home, and you can do it on Comcast.
There's some great new stuff, and I'm talking today with folks that are making it happen. I'm talking to Vito Forlenza, who's the VP of Sports and Entertainment at Comcast, as well as Kelly Wright, who's Director of [00:01:00] Sports Marketing at Comcast. Guys, I really appreciate you being here.
Jonathan: Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks for having us so first and foremost, just coming off of the Olympics, you guys are probably like, "Phew," 'cause you did so much when it came to making the Olympics an immersive experience, and of course, you're just bringing that right into the World Cup.
So let's just jump into what is going on with Xfinity. Why are we all gonna be jumping from our couches? Well, I'll start and then Kelly will jump in and- provide some finer points. But- Okay ... as we talked about for the Olympics, you know, at the, at the time we were calling it Legendary February.
We had the Olympics, we had the Super Bowl- Right ... we had the NBA All-Star game, all on the properties of our corporate brethren at NBC, and we created a lot of new things for that experience. And, and you may remember, Jonathan, at the time we talked about how we were on a deliberate journey to reimagine the sports viewing experience- Sure
and how we had our eyes on the World Cup, you know, even back in, you know, last August and September as we were building toward the Olympics. So what we're bringing here [00:02:00] is a lot of the features that we had for the Olympics and the Super Bowl, and then adding some new pieces and really to show about how our products and our different lines of business work better together.
So we'll get into how we are unifying our video experience and our Wi-Fi to make sure you have a, the most uninterrupted experience possible for the World Cup.
So Kelly, I mean, first off, this has to be so much fun for you, you know, at, at the marketing level of this thing to bring this thing out and kinda let the world know that, you can have a top-notch experience right from your couch. It's gotta be pretty amazing. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the largest World Cup ever, right?
With, with 48 teams and 104 games, there's an opportunity to really super serve our customers, and we know our customers are huge sports fans. So how, how we make that happen and how we make that come to life to make it a truly immersive experience is, is really exciting. Yeah. And the second thing we're doing that's, that's great and our platforms are kinda uniquely positioned to is, is we know that rights are becoming increasingly more fragmented, right?
So [00:03:00] a lot of sports fans never know where to watch or how to watch the events that they want- and what we do really, really well is we take it whether you're watching on linear or traditional cable or streaming platforms, you know, we bring it to you, whether it's in English or Spanish, we make it a really intuitive and immersive experience to make that content easily discoverable.
It's just amazing to see how far that the technology has come in order to allow it to seem so easy and simple as you experience it, but I know there's a lot of tech that obviously goes behind that.
And I, I think one of the big things I think that I think makes this exciting is the fact that you are integrating some AI, so as people are watching, they're getting insights from AI. Can you tell me more about how that's working and how that's part of the whole system here?
So we do what we call is catch-up highlights. So for those who record a game and DVR a game we use AI to highlight any of the major moments that are happening so that you don't need to watch the entire game all [00:04:00] the way through. Oh, okay. It'll, it uses the backend data system to look at any major goals or penalties or corners any large event that happens within the game so that you can catch up quickly and skip to those major moments.
But you can do like a power watch of that. Exactly. If I... You could say, "I need to watch four games. I gotta get through it." But this allows you to get the... That's, that's super cool. I like that feature a lot. See, someone like me could start geeking out on football pretty fast, so- There you go ... yeah, so. And you can do it quickly.
You can, you can have your- And, and go to- ... talking points on a game from last night in, in a matter of minutes. And I can go to work the next day and people will think, "Man, that dude is into it." You're making it easy for me, guys. I absolutely love that. And so Vito, one of the cool things I remember when we were talking about the Olympics was the idea of the multi-view, which is kind of crazy 'cause we can watch four things at once, which is kind of nuts.
Tell me about the multi-view and why that is something that is just so cool for something like this. [00:05:00] Yeah. Well, when we talked about it for the Olympics, we talked about it, about the Olympics and all the different events and watching them all at one time, but also being able to watch the NBA or, or college hoops at the same time.
So we've done something similar for the World Cup, where when the games overlap, and there's not a whole bunch of games that overlap for the World Cup, I think FIFA just like all the other leagues is like, "Look, we're gonna spread these out so our fans could watch all the games in separate windows."
However, you know, during the last round of group play, the teams will be playing at the same time, so there's no shenanigans of teams trying to intentionally tie or anything like that so they could both advance. So we'll have a multi-view, you can watch both of those games at the same time. But what I believe is a little bit more interesting is that you'll be able to, throughout the duration of the World Cup, be able to watch the World Cup along with Major League Baseball, WNBA, golf.
I mean, there is the US Open happening during the World Cup. F1 all these different types of sports that you don't have to miss. So we're gonna be in this huge cultural moment of the World Cup, but I'm still gonna watch my baseball. I'm a huge baseball fan. I'm gonna be watching that every night, [00:06:00] and I don't have to pick and choose.
So one of the things that we're also able to do is because of the way that we're starting out to integrate content directly into the X1 platform, a good example is what we're doing with Apple for F1 or Major League Baseball, baseball. We're also doing it for MLS, but of course MLS is on hiatus right now.
You can actually, instead of having to open the Apple Sports app to watch F1, for example, that'll be directly integrated into the platform. So when there's an F1 race on, you can have that in multi-view as well. You don't have to toggle between different apps or channels. It's all there in multi-view for you to watch, and you could customize it.
You could choose to prioritize one event and put that on a little bit of a bigger screen and have some of the other events in a smaller screen. You could choose where you want your audio source to come from. And then of course, maybe Kelly, you could talk about, 'cause Kelly and her team helped to build it, create your own multi-view.
Like we're gonna create multi-views for you that we might think you like, but you can also create your own. Nice. You can customize it. Kelly, tell me more about this. It's, it's really [00:07:00] exciting. We started with college football last year, right? On those college football Saturdays when there's a plethora of live events happening and, and you don't, you know, your, your fandom might differ than the person next to you you're able to, to pick up to four live events at once.
So we will have all of the live events that are happening and you can pick up to four, and you're not just picking what to watch but how you wanna watch. So to Vito's point, the mosaics that we use or the templates that you, that you view these events in, you can zoom in and s- choose to spotlight one event and have that on a rotating basis.
Say your Pirates are, are, you know, in the ninth inning and it's a close game, you can spotlight that and then quickly pop over to, F1 or MLB or WNBA, really what it, whatever it is you're interested in. And obviously move that audio around as well. So super exciting. You're not, again, just picking what to watch, but how to watch.
And it really is the most dynamic experience that I've seen. Oh, that's amazing. And what kind of blows my mind is that it takes a pretty powerful [00:08:00] network to make that happen. I think when you're streaming- Absolutely ... and pulling that in and being able to handle it and not have latency and all the crazy stuff, like it looks so easy , but there's a lot of engineering that goes behind the scenes I think is pretty cool stuff.
Yeah, and if you're not interested in watching four games at once and, and you really do wanna dive in- ... we're also delivering all 104 games in real time 4K. And real time 4K is, is a huge differentiator for Xfinity. It really is the best picture and audio quality in the market, just hands down.
It doesn't get any better than that, right? You're literally see every detail they gave you. You're watching the whole thing. It's like, "The grass seems a little tall on the field." Exactly. It, it has a Dolby Vision HDR for the highest picture quality. It has Dolby Atmos for immersive sound.
It also has the lowest latency, so to your point, it's powered by our network, which is the best. And, and you'll see it before anyone else, and just [00:09:00] couple quick stats around that. For Olympics and Super Bowl when we delivered this, we were able to see the Super Bowl 17 seconds behind the action on the field, which was
nine seconds faster than YouTube TV. . 31 seconds faster than Hulu, and if you're in a group chat with someone from DirecTV, it was- Yeah ... it was 49 seconds faster than DirecTV. So- you're gonna need to pause when you see this goal to not ruin any spoilers in those group chats.
That's amazing. And what actually makes me, like, freak out is that you're probably making it faster and faster. It's like, I don't know. That is the goal. Exactly. I'm like- You know, Jonathan, one, one of the things that we did when we, we, when we created real time 4K is our engineers, you're talking about the engineering behind it, they built a brand-new delivery lane for this content.
Yeah. So right from the plant, the source of acquisition where we're, you know, we have two acquisition sources in North America, all the way in through, to your point, piping it through the network and into the customer's homes, and then we also, because we control the device and the UI- [00:10:00] We can then get it into the customers' homes as fast as possible.
But if that's not enough, one of the new things that we have for the World Cup is something that we're calling Smart Boost Wi-Fi. This is the ability to prioritize a device, and this is pretty common for, for Wi-Fi, where you can go on there and you can say, "Okay, I wanna make sure my gaming isn't interrupted."
But what we're doing is we're taking it to the television. So if you're watching a game in real time 4K, we'll send you an alert that says, "Hey, you're watching in real time 4K. Would you like to prioritize your X1 device?" You know, just in case your Wi-Fi gets busy. And, and if your Wi-Fi does get busy and there's a lot of people in your house, somebody's gaming, somebody's on a teleconference, somebody's doing a podcast, whatever it might be, like we'll make sure that that game on your X1 device is uninterrupted.
And it's a free service that we bring. It's a brand-new technology to automatically boost your Wi-Fi. So we'll give you that notification, and then when you watch 4K from that point out, we'll just automatically do it for you just to make sure you have a little bit of a [00:11:00] insurance, I like to say that nothing is gonna interrupt your viewing experience.
I was gonna say, when you have all this going on, the last thing you need for your soccer- Exactly ... to be glitchy on you. It's like, what? Yeah. So that brings that, how awesome. Like a dedicated lane, and then knowing that you can prioritize that traffic as it's coming in. So if anyone else is using it, you can tell them ahead of time, "Look, man, if you get bumped, then it's on you."
Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And you could always go into your, your Xfinity app and, and, you know, choose different devices or, or reprioritize your session, you know, 'cause, you know, some of these games are on in the middle of the day. Like, "Hey, I need to prioritize my my Teams call," or something like that.
But it's a brand-new thing that we're excited. So in order to achieve all those awesome latency stats that Kelly explained, like this is just one little piece extra to make sure that that is the top-notch quality that we're bringing to your home. Yeah, all the details really coming together on, on just developing this platform to make it just the way to go and watch something like this.
And then I think about the timeframe of this, from like June 11th to July 19th. I mean, this is a hunk of time. I thought the Olympics was long. This is like twice- ... as long as the Olympics, right? So I, [00:12:00] I think the, A, it, it, this is like a, a really, it goes to really show how strong your, your network is to keep doing this, over the course of something that long.
And then to me, I'm just like, wow, like yeah, this is just exciting. And I cannot wait for June 11th, 'cause I believe what the USA starts off against Paraguay. Paraguay. Exactly. So, Yes ... let's let the action begin. So I guess, I mean, see, as me being someone that's not that knowledgeable about soccer and football, I am gonna start with just watching USA, because how can I not?
I hear that Spain, of course, is the team that's kinda favored right now. So what has you most excited? Any particular teams or people that you're following? Like give me some good stuff. Well, when you speak of Spain, they have an 18-year-old Lamine Yamal playing in La Liga for Barcelona, and I just hope we can get a chance to see him up close and see what he can do.
And, and then of course with Team USA, I'm gonna be a homer for a moment, Jonathan, and say that Xfinity sponsors Weston McKennie, so I'm all in on Weston and hope he has a great [00:13:00] tournament. And Kelly, who are you looking at? So I'm gonna be a homer and say, you know, I'm, I'm from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, so DelCo.
We have, we have two people in the, in the World Cup team, Matt Freese and Austin Trusty. So he's... Our, our goalie, Matt Freese, I think I'm gonna be rooting for him. He's from Wayne, Pennsylvania. I love the fact there's a bunch of folks from PA on the US- Yeah ... team. So that's why I'm watching. I'm gonna be cheering.
I'm cheering USA and PA all at the same time. I love it. Who, who's your guy? I'm gonna have to go with Christian Pulisic. Nice. When I was doing my research, just coming across this guy is kinda, like, hot. So I'm like, "All right. I'm gonna go with that."
It's kinda like when I was start, first watching F1, like, which team should I be watching that is not Ferrari? You know? And I'm like, "Maybe Haas or something like that." So you kinda find that sweet spot, and I think maybe he's that guy for me. So that's why it's so much fun to be able to then learn about their stories and then watch them actually play and do that with an immersive experience on my couch without getting a sunburn or, run over by, like, ravenous [00:14:00] crowds and stuff like that.
Now, I know people like that, but I'm more of an at home kind of a guy, so I'm just saying. Well, and you don't have to worry about the ticket prices or any of the transportation issues or anything like that. So just make it easy, or, you know, we'll keep you away from a sunburn and, and all the other headaches as well.
And, and again, you, you'll be able to watch, you know, the World Cup alongside your other favorite sports. You know, those other sports, they don't, they don't go on hiatus, you know? The, the soccer world does other than the World Cup, but yeah, those other leagues are still going strong. I mean, it's a great time to be a sports fan, and we're trying to make sure that you don't miss a beat of it with Xfinity.
Yeah, I don't see how you possibly could. Think you got everything kinda covered this time, which I think is really... It's just exciting for everybody out there. And it's so cool to see, this powerful technology, something that can really just entertain us and just kinda connect us at the end of the day too, 'cause we're all cheering and rooting for our teams, and I think it's just a cool unifying thing.
And it's all powered by a pretty awesome network, so guys, thanks for hanging out with me today. So I gotta start getting my gear together. Got like a week or so left [00:15:00] before it all begins, and let's see what happens. Yeah, it's now June. We're here. It's coming. We're here. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you.
Once again, thanks for hanging out with me. I really do appreciate you. And in case you forgot, this is Jonathan Kersting with the Pittsburgh Technology Council and TechVibe, and I look forward to seeing you on the next one.