Copa America got off to a much stronger start on the Fox Sports networks than three years ago. Plus: viewership continues to trend up for the UEFA Euros, the Men’s College World Series is near a record pace entering its Final; Olympic Trials viewership is rebounding from 2021.
Much stronger start for Copa America on Fox networks
Thursday’s Argentina-Canada Copa America opener averaged 1.06 million viewers on FS1, up 98% from the first Copa America match in 2021, a Sunday afternoon Brazil-Venezuela match on “big FOX” (534K). (Compared to the 2016 opener, which pit the USMNT against Colombia, viewership was unsurprisingly down 19% from 1.30 million.)
Argentina’s win, which peaked with 1.54 million in the 9:45 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the fourth largest non-U.S. soccer audience ever on FS1 (excluding the World Cup). The third-largest audience came just hours earlier as FS1 drew 1.15 million for Denmark-England in the UEFA Euro 2024.
Host market Atlanta was the top market for Argentina-Canada with a 1.6 rating and 5 share, followed by Baltimore (1.1/4) and Austin, Texas (1.0/5). Coverage also aired on Univision, figures for which were not immediately available.
Euro 2024 viewership up 30 percent
Shifting to the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament, group stage action was averaging 1.07 million through Thursday, up 30% from the same point in 2021 (821K). (Fox Sports has carried three fewer matches than ESPN did at the same point in ’21, as it sub-licensed some matches to the streaming service Fubo, which is not Nielsen rated.)
Thursday’s Spain-Italy match averaged 1.81 million on FOX, trailing only England-Serbia on the opening weekend of play (1.83M) as the top audience of the tournament thus far. Spain’s win, which peaked with 2.24 million in the 4:30 PM ET quarter-hour, increased 95% from Netherlands-Austria on ESPN three years ago (926K). On Wednesday, a Scotland-Switzerland draw averaged 1.23 million on FOX (+26%).
Earlier in the week, Portugal-Czechia averaged 1.23 million viewers on FOX Tuesday, down from France-Germany on ESPN in 2021. France-Austria the previous day drew 1.18 million, up 24% from Spain-Sweden in ’21. As previously noted, Denmark-England drew 1.15 million on FS1 Thursday, up 30% from ’21 (Denmark-Belgium: 884K).
Men’s College World Series trails only last year entering Final
The Men’s College World Series is averaging 1.21 million viewers across the ESPN networks entering the best-of-three Final, down 9% from last year but still the second-highest average on record at this point of the event. Prior to last year, the record entering the final was 1.1 million in 2009. (Keep in mind that Nielsen did not include out-of-home viewing in its final estimates prior to 2020, meaning that all things being equal, 2009 may still have been higher.)
Wednesday’s Texas A&M-Florida game averaged a tournament-high 1.79 million on ESPN, marking the seventh-largest audience on record prior to the Final.
Olympic Trials trending up from ’21
Primetime coverage of the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials has averaged 3.3 million viewers on NBC through Wednesday night (including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen), up 23% from the full, seven-night average in 2021. The diving competition was averaging 2.9 million through Tuesday, up 39% from ’21.
This year’s average is still well below the same point in 2016, when viewership regularly topped the five million mark.
