America may still call football its national religion, but soccer is increasingly performing miracles at the box office. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is proving just how enormous the sport has become in the United States, with 62.8 million viewers watching the final, 99.7% stadium capacity, and billions flowing into host regions. Right now, everyone might as well have their minds on TV shows. With sports already ruling the kingdom, Carlton Cuse is still betting scripted television can build an even bigger world.

Cuse worries about the genre’s future, but believes great scripted stories can eventually give audiences more life than the NFL ever could.

Speaking at the Italian Global Series Festival in Rimini, Emmy-winning Lost co-showrunner Carlton Cuse addressed a television industry increasingly watching sports swallow the room. With the NBA securing an 11-year, $77 billion broadcasting deal and football dominating American ratings, Cuse acknowledged the financial pressure on scripted entertainment while making clear that he remains firmly in its corner.

“The subtextual nature of storytelling creates an opportunity for us to learn lessons about ourselves, the world and about life that you’re not gonna get watching an NFL game,” Carlton Cuse said. For all the touchdowns, tackles, and stadium-sized spectacle, scripted stories can sneak past the popcorn and into the human brain, where they occasionally cause something dangerously close to self-reflection.

Carlton Cuse knows sports are an extraordinarily effective way to make audiences show up, with football accounting for more than 80% of the top-rated U.S. broadcasts last year. Still, he remains optimistic, as seen through his views shared with Deadline, that scripted television will endure because fictional stories do more than attract eyeballs: they give viewers a chance to understand the world, life, and themselves.

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Staying true to Carlton Cuse’s words, viewers are still hunting for television shows to watch in August 2026, which is hardly surprising from the man who has spent decades making audiences do exactly that.

Calling Carlton Cuse merely a television veteran is like calling a marathon runner someone who has taken a long walk. Before streaming turned into Hollywood’s favourite excuse for changing the channel, Cuse was already running multiple network dramas at once, including Nash Bridges and Martial Law, while producing an astonishing 46 episodes in a single season.

Then came Lost, where Cuse co-showran all six seasons, co-wrote 32 episodes, and helped turn a mysterious island into a full-time global obsession. After that, he hardly treated success as a reason to sit down, running Bates Motel, The Strain, Colony, and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan while earning major accolades along the way. With a career built on making audiences stay glued to the screen, Cuse’s faith in scripted television is hardly a surprise: he has spent more than three decades proving that stories can be appointment viewing.

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Do you agree with Carlton Cuse? Let us know in the comments!