The United States’ World Cup run ended with the biggest viewership milestone yet.
Monday’s Belgium-United States FIFA World Cup round of 16 match averaged a preliminary Nielsen audience of 30.0 million viewers on FOX, including pre-match coverage — ranking as easily the largest soccer audience ever on U.S. English-language television, with or without pre-match coverage included. The previous high was 26.395 million for the previous USMNT match against Bosnia & Herzegovina.
The five USMNT matches in this year’s World Cup rank among the eight most-watched soccer telecasts ever on English-language television, with the two knockout stage matches placing first and second and the group stage matches against Paraguay (18.04M), Turkey (17.02M) and Australia (16.22M) ranking fourth, fifth and eighth. (The three exceptions were the 2015 and 1999 Women’s World Cup finals at 22.32 and 17.98 million respectively, and the 2022 Argentina-France World Cup final at 16.78 million.)
Prior to this year, the record for a USMNT World Cup match (including pre-match coverage) was 15.38 million for a 2022 group stage match against England that aired on FOX the day after Thanksgiving. (With pre-match coverage excluded, the record was 18.2 million for a 2014 group stage match against Portugal on ESPN.)
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.
Belgium’s win, which peaked with 36.9 million in the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour, more-than-doubled the previous USMNT round of 16 match four years ago — a loss to the Netherlands that aired on the morning of a college football Saturday (12.97M). It also more-than-doubled the same Belgium-USMNT matchup in the 2014 round of 16, which averaged 13.44 million in a Tuesday afternoon window on ESPN.
