The World Cup Came to Our Backyard Last Night, and Florida Watched It Through a Paywall

Hard Rock Stadium hosted Saudi Arabia vs. Uruguay last night, and if you blinked during the first 45 minutes you missed the only goal that mattered for a while: Abdulelah Al-Amri poking in a rebound off Uruguay legend Fernando Muslera to put Saudi Arabia ahead. It held up for most of the match, right up until the kind of late, deflating equalizer that Uruguay fans are now extremely used to watching unfold in real time.

Final score: 1-1. Saudi Arabia’s goalkeeper, Mohammed Al-Owais, was the actual star of the night, stacking up save after save against a Uruguay side that finished with 67% possession and 27 shots and somehow still couldn’t find more than one goal. That one goal came in the 80-something minute mark, Maxi Araújo pouncing on a ball Al-Owais could only push into his path, and Marcelo Bielsa’s side escaped Miami with a point they probably didn’t fully deserve given how the first hour went. Miami’s heat reportedly did its part too, wearing Uruguay’s legs down as much as Al-Owais did.

It was a genuinely good World Cup match. 62,764 people were there to see it in person at one of the most recognizable venues in the country, where the Dolphins normally play. The rest of Florida, presumably, watched from a couch, because Hard Rock Stadium does not let you in for free, and as it turns out, neither does the channel that aired it.

About those 62,764 people

Tickets for Saudi Arabia vs. Uruguay started, depending on which resale site you checked, somewhere between $280 and $450, with the average landing closer to $450–$500. FIFA’s official line is that Group Stage tickets begin at $60. That number exists the way “starting at” prices exist on every car commercial — technically true, structurally irrelevant to anyone actually trying to buy one. If you wanted a suite instead of a seat, by the way, the next Uruguay match at Hard Rock has 12 of them starting at $46,950. Just so you know where the ceiling is.

So: not exactly a budget-friendly Monday night out for most working South Floridians, but genuinely one of the more “affordable” tickets of the tournament’s opening week, which says more about the rest of the World Cup’s pricing than it does about this match.

Here’s the part where staying home doesn’t save you either

In Kansas City, where Argentina played its opener the very next night, the broadcast was on FOX — free, over the air, antenna and all. Saudi Arabia vs. Uruguay did not get that treatment. This one aired on FS1, which is a cable-exclusive channel, meaning your roof antenna picked up exactly nothing last night no matter how you angled it. Telemundo carried a Spanish broadcast, also cable/satellite, also not the free option some of us were hoping for.

To actually watch this match at home, legally, you needed one of: a Fubo subscription (starting around $46-$59 a month for the first stretch, more after), a YouTube TV subscription (around $68–$83 a month), Hulu + Live TV (around $90), DirecTV’s entertainment package ($60–$90), or FOX One streaming on its own at $19.99 a month. Peacock’s cheaper Spanish-language tier helps if you only need Telemundo’s side of things, starting around $8–$11. There was, as far as we can tell, no actual free way to watch this specific match outside of “know somebody with a Fubo password.”

So here’s where we land, Florida: the World Cup played in our literal backyard last night, in front of nearly 63,000 people who paid real money to be there, and the rest of us paid a different, smaller amount of real money just to watch it from the couch on a Monday. The “people’s game” remains a great phrase. The people, once again, were the ones footing the bill on both ends of that sentence.

Miami hosts more World Cup matches throughout the group stage and beyond, including Uruguay’s next group game against Cabo Verde on June 21. Budget accordingly — for the ticket and the remote.