Heading into the final 48 hours of the FIFA World Cup, the viewership records continue to fall.
The FIFA World Cup semifinals averaged 15.09 million viewers on FOX (including pre-match coverage) and 10.6 million on Telemundo and Peacock (match window only), the latter figure combining a Nielsen-measured linear audience (4.9M) with streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics (5.7M) — marking the most-watched World Cup semifinal round ever on English or Spanish-language television, respectively.
The FOX audience increased 131% from the 2022 World Cup semifinals in Qatar, which took place during the winter months (6.53M). The combined figure for Telemundo increased 136% from 2022 (4.5M), with the linear audience up 69% (from 2.7M) and streaming viewership up more than threefold (from 1.6M).
Wednesday’s Argentina-England match averaged 16.90 million on FOX (including pre-match) and 11.4 million on Telemundo and Peacock (match window only), ranking as the most-watched semifinal match ever on English or Spanish-language television.
Argentina’s extra-time win delivered the largest weekday afternoon audience of the World Cup on both Fox Sports and Telemundo, surpassing even the lone weekday afternoon matchups of the tournament for both the United States and Mexico. USMNT-Australia averaged 16.22 million on FOX in a Friday afternoon window June 19 — a national holiday — and Mexico delivered 10.1 million on Telemundo for the opening match of the World Cup, a Thursday afternoon window on June 11.
The FOX audience, which peaked with 24.72 million in the 4:45 PM ET quarter-hour, ranks as the third-largest on record for a non-U.S. World Cup match on English-language television — trailing only England’s quarterfinal win over Norway last weekend (21.80M) and their round of sixteen win over Mexico two weeks ago (21.74M). Including the Argentina-Switzerland quarterfinal (18.15M), this year’s World Cup accounts for the top four such audiences, each surpassing the 2022 Argentina-France World Cup final (16.78M).
On Tuesday, Spain-France averaged 13.11 million on FOX (including pre-match) and 9.8 million on Telemundo and Peacock (match window only).
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.
