If the opening match is any indication, any number of viewership records will be falling during the FIFA World Cup.
Thursday’s Mexico-South Africa FIFA World Cup group stage match averaged 6.31 million viewers on FOX, per a combination of Nielsen preliminary fast-nationals, Adobe Analytics, and first-party data from the Fox-owned streaming service Tubi, marking the largest audience on record for a World Cup opening match on English-language television.
Figures for Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo were not immediately available. Final national Nielsen figures will not be out until Monday at the earliest.
El Tri’s win, which peaked with 8.01 million in the 4:15 PM ET quarter-hour, also ranks as the most-watched non-U.S. World Cup group stage match ever on English language TV. Note that this year’s World Cup is just the second since Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in its estimates and the first since the company shifted to a new methodology that integrates “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel.
With viewership so high for a non-U.S. match — played outside of the U.S. in the middle of a weekday afternoon — all bets would seem to be off as to how high the viewership could climb for this year’s World Cup. The United States plays Paraguay in Los Angeles Friday night, in what would appear to be the first primetime USMNT World Cup match on broadcast television.
As one might expect ahead of the first World Cup on American soil since 1994, viewership for the USMNT has begun to pick up. The team’s friendly against Germany last weekend averaged a 0.7 rating and 1.47 million viewers on TNT Sports, making it the most-watched United States friendly — men’s or women’s — ever on English-language television.
Viewership, which peaked at 1.9 million, soared above the previous high for a friendly during this World Cup cycle — 867,000 for a matchup against Senegal on May 31. It also surpassed the Spanish-language audience for Mexico’s final friendly heading into the World Cup, against Serbia on Univision and TUDN June 4 (0.6, 1.27M).
The match led into the U.S. women’s team playing in its most-watched friendly since 2015, as their matchup against Brazil drew 853,000.
