USWNT-England viewership strong despite drop

If no match for a primetime semifinal four years ago, USWNT-England still delivered a strong audience.

Tuesday’s United States-England FIFA Women’s World Cup match averaged 7.03 million viewers on FOX, down 17% from the USWNT-Germany semifinal in 2015, which aired in primetime (8.43M), but up 109% from the USWNT-France semifinal on ESPN in 2011, which began in the morning (3.35).

Despite the decline, the match delivered the fifth-largest Women’s World Cup audience on record. Three of the top ten have come during this year’s tournament; the USWNT quarterfinal against France ranks sixth (6.12M) and its group stage match against Chile eighth (5.32M). Nine of the top 12 matches have aired on Fox Sports.

In addition, it earned the third-largest soccer audience on a single network — regardless of gender — since the 2015 Women’s World Cup Final (25.4M). It trails two of last year’s World Cup telecasts: the France-Croatia final on FOX (12.51M) and the Mexico-Germany group stage match on Telemundo (7.13M).

The match had a streaming audience of 361,000 on Fox Sports’ digital platforms, a Women’s World Cup record for the outlet. Across TV and streaming, the FOX telecast had 7.39 million.

It also had a Spanish-language audience of 1.02 million on NBCSN, Telemundo and Telemundo’s digital platforms, the second-largest Spanish-language Women’s World Cup audience on record. The 2015 final had 1.27 million.

Across Fox Sports, NBCSN and Telemundo, the TV-only match window audience was 8.79 million (7.89M on FOX and 909,000 on Telemundo).

Through Tuesday, the Women’s World Cup is averaging 1.38 million viewers on Fox Sports — up 5% from 2015 (1.31M) and up 47% from 2011 on ESPN and ESPN2 (934K). The tournament had been trending up by double-digits, but Tuesday’s double-digit decline obviously narrowed the gap.

Viewership remains up despite declines for four of the six U.S. matches. With this year’s tournament taking place six hours ahead of Eastern time, no match has started after 3 PM ET. By comparison, a number of matches in 2015 — including every U.S. match — aired in primetime.