The United States men’s national team finished its World Cup run in front of one of the largest sports audiences — NFL excluded — of modern times.
Monday’s Belgium-United States FIFA World Cup round of sixteen match averaged 33.09 million viewers on FOX, including pre-match coverage — easily the most-watched soccer telecast ever on a single U.S. network, blowing past the previous high of 26.395 million for the previous USMNT match against Bosnia & Herzegovina.
The FOX audience, which peaked with 41.03 million in the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour, is the largest for any non-NFL sporting event since Game 7 of the 2016 World Series (40.05M). In a year of highs, it surpassed the Indiana-Miami College Football Playoff National Championship in January (30.1M), Game 7 of last year’s World Series (Dodgers-Blue Jays: 27.33M), the Knicks’ coronation in Game 5 of the NBA Finals last month (24.54M) and the United States winning its first Olympic men’s hockey gold medal since 1980 (18.6M across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics), all of which were the most-watched telecasts of their respective sport in this decade.
The match also averaged 12.9 million viewers on Telemundo across a Nielsen-measured linear audience and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics, a match window figure that ranks as the largest for a USMNT match on Spanish-language television. The official Nielsen audience for Telemundo, which includes pre-match coverage, was 5.2 million — bringing the combined, Nielsen-measured total to 38.3 million.
Just on that basis — which includes pre-match coverage and does not include the NBCUniversal streaming viewership that accounted for the majority (7.1M) of Telemundo’s audience — the match officially surpasses every college football game and every basketball game (college or pro) in the Nielsen people meter era.
Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is months into a new methodology that integrates its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will skew historical comparisons, particularly to years before 2020.
Earlier Monday, Portugal-Spain averaged 10.05 million on FOX (including pre-match) and 8.7 million on Telemundo and Peacock (match window only). On Tuesday, Switzerland-Colombia averaged 8.81 million on FOX and 8.0 million on Telemundo and Peacock, preceded by Argentina’s comeback over Egypt at 7.30 and 7.5 million respectively.
The full FIFA World Cup round of sixteen averaged 14.5 million viewers on FOX (including pre-match) and 11.1 million on Telemundo (match window only), up 216 and 265 percent respectively from four years ago, when the World Cup took place in Qatar during the winter months. For Telemundo, the Nielsen-measured linear audience (5.2M) trailed its Adobe Analytics-measured streaming equivalent (6.0M). The linear audience more-than-doubled 2022 (+145%), but the streaming audience increased sixfold (+535%).
The United States and Mexico matches were easily the most-watched of the round — and the tournament. As previously noted, Mexico’s loss to England Sunday night averaged 23.2 million on Telemundo (match window only) and 21.7 million on FOX (including pre-match).
The most-watched match to include neither the U.S. nor Mexico was Brazil-Norway earlier Sunday at 14.57 million on FOX and 13.8 million on Telemundo/Peacock.
Rounding out the round of sixteen slate, FOX averaged 13.72 million for France-Paraguay and 8.88 million for Morocco-Canada on the Fourth of July holiday. The same matches on Telemundo/Peacock averaged 9.2 and 6.0 million respectively.
