Airing on broadcast television for the second time, the MLS Cup hit a viewership milestone.
Last Saturday’s Atlanta-Portland MLS Cup earned a 0.9 rating and 1.563 million viewers on FOX, up 75% in ratings and 95% in viewership from last year on ESPN (Toronto-Seattle: 0.5, 803K) and up a tick and 11% respectively from 2016 on FOX (Seattle-Toronto: 0.8, 1.41M).
Atlanta’s win, which peaked with 2.07 million from 10-10:15 PM ET, delivered the largest MLS Cup audience on a single network since 1997. Per Sports Business Daily, the 1997 audience was 2.2 million.
Overall, it was the top MLS telecast on a single network since 2004, when a D.C.-San Jose match had 1.97 million on ABC. The previous high set earlier this year, when Atlanta-Seattle scored 1.558 million on FOX following the World Cup Final.
Including the streaming audience on Fox Sports GO, English-language coverage had 1.59 million viewers.
The game had a Spanish-language audience of 193,000 on UniMas, down 37% from last year (304K) and down 68% from 2016 (601K), when coverage aired on both UniMas and Univision Deportes Network.
The combined TV audience of 1.76 million marks a 59% increase from last year (1.11M), but a 13% decline from 2016 (2.01M).
[Numbers from Fox Sports PR 12.11, Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 12.11; additional info from Sports Business Daily 12.12]
