NBC Sports host Rebecca Lowe is joining Netflix’s broadcast team for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup, chief content officer Bela Bajaria announced Thursday.
Lowe, the longtime host of NBC Sports’ Premier League coverage, most recently anchored Fox Sports’ coverage of the 2026 men’s World Cup alongside Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Alexi Lalas. She joins previously announced broadcasters Elle Duncan and Andrés Cantor on Netflix’s team for next summer’s tournament in Brazil.
“I’m really excited also to announce that we have added Rebecca Lowe to the broadcast team, who is so amazing, so seasoned, so respected,” Bajaria said during Puck and MoffettNathanson’s In the Arena conference on Thursday in New York. “Really excited to be able to bring that kind of broadcast talent to our team on Netflix.”
The addition comes as Netflix prepares to stream all 64 matches of the Women’s World Cup in the U.S. and Canada, where the streamer holds exclusive rights to the tournament in 2027 and 2031. The ’27 tournament will run from June 24 through July 25 across eight cities in Brazil.
Lowe has led NBC Sports’ Premier League coverage since 2013 and has hosted seven consecutive Olympic Games for the network. She previously worked for ESPN in the U.S. and U.K., including on the network’s coverage of the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Her addition also comes as Netflix continues expanding its live sports footprint while taking a selective approach to acquiring rights. Bajaria said the streamer is focused on identifying sporting events it can turn into cultural moments rather than simply building a traditional year-round sports portfolio.
“The strategy for us is to just say, like, what’s really an event, and eventize a moment,” Bajaria said. “It can be a Christmas Day game. It can be opening week. It can be opening game of, you know, MLB.”
“It can be Women’s World Cup,” she continued. “So it’s just what is sort of a sporting event we can create a lot of conversation around to make it very sort of appointment television.”
For Netflix, Bajaria noted, an “event” doesn’t necessarily mean a one-off game. It can also encompass a tournament with a defined narrative arc — “a beginning, a middle, and there’s a defined end.”
The exec pointed to Netflix’s relationship with the NFL as another example of that approach. Bajaria said the league understood early on why Netflix wanted to center its football presence around Christmas and the entertainment opportunities surrounding the games.
She also recalled calling the NFL to tell the league Beyoncé would perform at halftime during Netflix’s Christmas Day coverage. “I was like, ‘We’re an entertainment company. Of course Beyoncé is going to do the halftime,’” Bajaria said, adding that the resulting Beyoncé Bowl was “really cool.”
