On a weekday afternoon, over 20 million viewers watched soccer on cable and Spanish-language television.
The Belgium/United States FIFA World Cup match earned a combined 21.6 million viewers across ESPN and Univision Tuesday afternoon, the third-largest audience for a soccer telecast in the United States. The only matches to earn a larger audience were USA/Portugal earlier in this year’s World Cup (24.7M) and the Spain/Netherlands 2010 World Cup final (24.3M).
Considering the timeslot — 3:30 PM ET on a Tuesday afternoon — the audience is one of the most impressive in recent TV history. USA/Portugal had the benefit of airing on a Sunday evening.
ESPN alone earned a 9.8 U.S. rating and 16.5 million viewers for its coverage, the highest rated and second-most watched non-football telecast in the history of the network. Only USA/Portugal generated a larger audience (18.2M). Overall, ESPN’s telecast was the second-highest rated and third-most watched soccer telecast ever on a single U.S. network, trailing the 1999 USA/China Women’s World Cup final in both measures (11.5, 18.0M) and USA/Portugal in viewership.
Univision added 5.1 million viewers for its coverage, its second-largest audience ever for a USA World Cup match. USA/Portugal set the record with 6.5 million viewers.
Beyond television, the WatchESPN streaming platform chipped in 1.1 million viewers, the largest audience in the history of the application. Combined, ESPN’s various platforms delivered nearly 18.0 million viewers for the match.
To put the numbers in perspective, the 2010 Ghana/USA Round of 16 match earned 19.4 million viewers across ABC and Univision, earning 14.9 million viewers on the former and 4.5 million on the latter. That match aired on a Saturday afternoon.
Tuesday’s match had a 7.5 rating among adults 18-49, including a 5.6 on ESPN alone.
(Tue. numbers from ESPN, Univision)
