The FIFA World Cup continues to set or approach viewership marks as it enters its second week.
Thursday’s Mexico-South Korea FIFA World Cup match averaged a preliminary audience of 13.3 million viewers on Telemundo, combining Nielsen fast-nationals with a streaming audience tracked by Adobe Analytics — up from the preliminary figure reported for Mexico’s opening match against South Africa the previous week.
Mexico’s win delivered the largest streaming audience — 5.8 million — ever for a World Cup match on Spanish-language television, topping the previous high of 4.9 million for Mexico-South Africa. Pending finalized Nielsen results, which will be available next week, it could finish with the largest-ever Spanish-language World Cup audience across all platforms.
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.
As for English-language television, FOX averaged 9.08 million for Argentina-Algeria Tuesday night, a figure that includes pre-match coverage — trailing only Brazil-Morocco on Saturday as the most-watched non-U.S. group stage match ever on English-language television.
Argentina’s win, which peaked with 10.53 million, ranks third overall among World Cup matches on FOX this year — behind Brazil-Morocco and last Friday’s United States-Paraguay match.
FOX also averaged 5.91 million for Norway-Iraq and 5.07 million for France-Senegal on Tuesday. (Figures for the late night Austria-Jordan match on FS1 were not disclosed.) Monday’s action topped out at 4.84 million for the midday Belgium-Egypt match on FOX, followed by 4.72 million for Iran-New Zealand in primetime on FS1. The Noon ET Spain-Cape Verde match on FOX drew 3.63 million, and Saudi Arabia-Uruguay rounded out the day with 3.14 million on FS1.
