Live sports streaming is a hot commodity for Internet companies, and now some have their sights on the 2018 World Cup. According to a Bloomberg report, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are looking to obtain online streaming rights for World Cup game highlights. Fox Sports is the exclusive rights holder for the 2018 World Cup, to be hosted by Russia, and those social media websites are reportedly bidding tens of millions of dollars for the rights to stream highlights of games broadcast in the US.

Whether Fox will sell the rights for these game highlights to one company or spread them out among many companies is unclear. It's worth noting that Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are only bidding for highlights—not the rights to stream full World Cup matches. Fox reportedly paid $400 million for multi-year rights to the World Cup and will air games on broadcast and cable television.

But highlights may be in higher demand for the 2018 World Cup because many broadcasted games will be shown at odd times thanks to the Russian time difference. Short sports clips, like highlights, lend themselves well to social media, but they could be sought out even more during the next World Cup by soccer fans who can't watch games at 2am.

Bloomberg notes that Fox will retain rights to use the highlights on its shows, but Facebook, Twitter, or Snapchat would also be able to use them to "entice more casual sports fans to show an interest in the tournament." They could also possibly produce their own commentary shows about World Cup matches.

This is the latest sports grab by Internet companies, most of which are putting more effort and money into gleaning live sports streaming rights. Amazon paid $50 million for the rights to stream Thursday Night Football games for the 2017 season to Prime members, and Facebook has a deal with Major League Soccer and Univision to stream over 20 regular season games, plus produce sports commentary shows to go along with them.

Live sports programming isn't the only type of video that social media websites are looking to stream more of (both Facebook and Snapchat are developing original video content). But it's one of the hardest types of video to obtain. Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and others have to pay millions for the right to stream live sports, and that likely isn't going to change in the foreseeable future.