Just as in the quarterfinals, El Tri and the USMNT could not boost Gold Cup semifinal viewership.
Sunday’s Jamaica-Mexico CONCACAF Gold Cup semifinal earned 3.3 million viewers on Univision, down 25% from Mexico-Panama in 2015 (4.4M). Match window figures for the 2013 Mexico-Panama semifinal were unavailable; that telecast had 3.3 million with pre-match coverage included.
Mexico’s upset loss was the third-most watched match of the tournament on any network, trailing its quarterfinal win over Honduras (3.47M) and its opener against El Salvador (3.55M). As one would expect, Mexico’s five matches delivered the five largest audiences of the tournament, all on Univision.
English-language coverage of the same match had 794,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1 — up 177% from Mexico-Panama in ’15, which aired on Fox Sports 2 (287K). That figure includes prematch coverage.
In the other semifinal, United States-Costa Rica pulled 1.13 million viewers on Univision (match only) and 1.09 million on FS1 (prematch included) Saturday night — down 42% and 11% respectively from Jamaica-U.S. in 2015 (1.9M, 1.2M). While this year’s match aired on the least-watched night of the week, the 2015 match started before 7 PM ET on a weekday.
Entering Wednesday’s final, the Gold Cup has averaged 1.4 million viewers on the Univision family of networks, off 22% from 2015 (1.8M). Averages for Fox Sports were not available.
[Numbers from Univision, ShowBuzz Daily 7.25]
