The first United States World Cup match on home soil in more than three decades delivered on both English and Spanish-language television.
Friday’s United States-Paraguay FIFA World Cup group stage match averaged 15.99 million viewers on FOX, per a combination of Nielsen fast-nationals, Adobe Analytics, and first-party data from the Fox-owned streaming service Tubi (1.13M) — marking the largest audience on record for a USMNT World Cup match on English-language television.
As the FOX audience includes pre-match coverage, any apples-to-apples comparisons to prior years must also include pre-match coverage. The previous high with pre-match coverage included was 15.38 million for the USMNT-England group play match on the day after Thanksgiving four years ago. (On a match window basis, the USMNT-Portugal group play match in 2014 has owned the record with 18.2 million viewers on ESPN, but that match had only 13.8 million including pre-match coverage.)
The FOX audience, which peaked with 18.86 million viewers, increased 106% from the first USMNT match of the 2022 World Cup — a matchup against Wales that averaged 7.76 million in a Monday afternoon window in November.
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.
Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo averaged 8.9 million across a Nielsen-measured linear audience and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics, a figure that does not include pre-match coverage — up 156% from the 2022 match against Wales (3.5M) and the largest audience ever for a USMNT match on Spanish-language television.
A combined match window figure would likely surpass the 25 million mark, putting it in range of the largest soccer audiences ever recorded in this country — 26.7 million for the finals of the 2014 World Cup (Germany-Argentina) and 2015 Women’s World Cup (United States-Japan).
Events like the World Cup and Olympics are particularly potent television draws when taking place in North America, owing not just to familiarity of locations and national pride, but also the ability to maximize the television schedule. Friday’s USMNT match may have been the team’s first primetime World Cup match on broadcast television.
To be sure, the good times have extended beyond primetime. Telemundo averaged an even larger audience for Mexico-South Africa the previous afternoon, averaging 12.1 million for the match window — the largest audience on record for any non-USMNT World Cup match on any network, regardless of language. It was also the most-watched World Cup opening match on any network, again regardless of language.
FOX averaged a preliminary 6.31 million (Nielsen + Adobe + first-party data from Tubi) for the same match, including pre-match coverage. A combined match window figure would likely surpass the 19 million mark.
