Asian Cup games to be streamed to viewers in the United States
All of the games from the Asian Cup, the continental competition for teams from the Asian Football Confederation, are fully available to viewers in the United States.
The likes of Japan, South Korea, Qatar, and Australia are vying for the title. Qatar enters as the defending champion after reaching its first success in 2019. For audiences in the United States, CBS’ streaming platform Paramount+ has coverage of the tournament from Qatar.
Paramount+’s coverage includes 33 group-stage contests available on the service. That includes games from each of the six groups in the tournament of 24 nations. A few of the games may be streamed on the CBS Sports Golazo Network. Iran is playing the United Arab Emirates and Australia faces Uzbekistan in some of the notable fixtures of the group stage.
AFC formed the groups based on the April 2023 FIFA World Rankings. Spread across four pots, the top six teams could not have been drawn against one another. While that may take away some of the draw of the group stage, the first batch of games can still be volatile. Moreover, the Asian soccer scene has been continually growing in ability. Success from Japan, South Korea, and Australia is indicative of that.
Each of those teams, and the 21 others vying for success in Qatar, is in action on Paramount+ for audiences in the United States. The competition starts Jan. 12, and it runs through Feb. 10.
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Paramount+ has Asian Cup rights in the United States
This year, the six teams at the top of the FIFA World Rankings in Asia are the favorites to win the Asian Cup. At the top of that list is Japan. The Japanese have been dominating teams from across the world since narrowly falling to Croatia in the World Cup round of 16. Japan has won its last nine games between friendlies and World Cup qualifiers. In those games, Japan is averaging over four goals per game. That includes comfortable wins over Canada, Turkey, Peru, and, most notably, Germany.
Yet, just behind Japan in the list of favorites is South Korea. Led by talisman Son Heung-min, South Korea also reached the knockout stage at the World Cup after finishing ahead of Ghana and Uruguay. South Korea has also been steamrolling its opposition in recent weeks. No team has scored against South Korea since El Salvador in June 2023. South Korea has had no shortage of scoring goals, either, with 19 in the side’s last five games.
Asian Cup starts in mid-January
Those games in the World Cup will seem familiar for this year. Qatar is using the same venues that featured in the World Cup in December 2022. South Korea opens the tournament at Education City Stadium where it played each of its group-stage games.
Each team’s three-game group-stage schedule finishes by Jan. 25. Then, the round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, and final are in the days following. Below, you can find the full schedule of the Asian Cup games airing on Paramount+.
PHOTOS: IMAGO / NurPhoto