The second USMNT match of the World Cup delivered another milestone audience.
Friday’s United States-Australia FIFA World Cup group stage match averaged a preliminary 14.78 million viewers on FOX, per Nielsen fast-nationals, marking the fourth-largest audience for a men’s World Cup match on English-language television — trailing only the previous week’s USMNT-Paraguay match on FOX (18.04M), the 2022 Argentina-France final (16.78M), and a 2022 USMNT-England match that aired on the day after Thanksgiving (15.38M). The above figures include pre-match coverage.
Across all soccer telecasts, it ranks sixth behind the three above-mentioned matches and the 1999 and 2015 Women’s World Cup finals, both won by the United States (18.0 and 22.3 million respectively).
The United States’ win, which peaked with 19.17 million in the 4:45 PM ET quarter-hour, could move up the rankings once the final Nielsen figures are released early next week.
Note that this year’s World Cup is just the second since Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in its estimates in 2020 and the first since the company shifted to a new methodology last fall that integrates “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel. Those changes have given most sports properties a leg up on even just a year ago, much less four years ago — and certainly as compared to years prior to 2020.
It is not entirely surprising that viewership declined from the previous week’s Paraguay match, which aired in primetime. While the Australia match aired on Juneteenth, a national holiday on which potential viewers are presumably off from work, a Friday afternoon is generally going to be less of a draw than a Friday night.
With the results of Friday’s play, the USMNT will finish at the top of its group and advance to the knockout stage, ensuring at least two more matches — Thursday’s group stage finale against Turkey and a July 1 knockout stage match against a team to be determined, both in primetime on FOX.
This year’s World Cup is the first men’s edition on American soil since 1994 and thus far has been generating audiences far in excess of the previous edition four years ago, a Qatar-based tournament that took place in the winter months.
