The first USWNT match of the Women’s World Cup scored an increase in overnight ratings.
Tuesday’s United States-Thailand FIFA Women’s World Cup match earned a 2.2 overnight rating on FOX, up a tick from the first U.S. match in the 2015 tournament, which aired in primetime but on FS1 (vs. Australia: 2.1), and up 175% from their first match in 2011, which aired in the morning on ESPN (vs. South Korea: 0.8).
The above figure includes pre-match coverage. The match window had a 2.4 overnight, with comparable figures in 2011 and 2015 unavailable.
Kansas City led all markets for Tuesday’s match with a 4.5 rating, followed by San Diego (4.1), and Tulsa, Okla. (3.7). Austin, Tex., and Richmond, Va., rounded out the top five at a 3.6.
In other action, Sunday’s England-Scotland match had a 0.9 final rating and 1.48 million viewers on FOX — up 50% in ratings and 75% in viewership from Norway-Thailand in a similar window four years ago (0.6, 847K).
England’s win delivered the largest audience on record for a Women’s World Cup group stage match that did not involve the United States.
Earlier in the day, FS1 pulled a 0.36 and 600,000 for Brazil-Jamaica and a 0.21 and 321,000 for Australia-Italy. There were no comparable early morning windows in 2015.
To put the numbers in perspective, non-U.S. group stage matches averaged 577,000 on FS1 in 2015 and 426,000 on ESPN and ESPN2 in 2011.
On Saturday, FOX drew a 0.8 and 1.21 million for Norway-Nigeria and a 0.7 and 1.08 million for Spain-South Africa. Both matches exceeded the average for non-U.S. group stage matches on FOX in 2015 (1.03M). FS1 chipped in a 0.30 and 473,000 for Germany-China.
None of the weekend matches had more than 23,000 streaming viewers on the Fox Sports app.
[Numbers from Fox Sports, Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 6.12]
