Even in a bad timeslot, USA World Cup soccer managed to generate a large television audience.
The Germany/United States FIFA World Cup match earned approximately 14.2 million viewers across ESPN and Univision Thursday afternoon. On ESPN alone, the match drew a 6.7 U.S. rating and 10.8 million viewers — ranking as the second-highest rated and third-most watched men’s soccer telecast in the history of the network. Only USA/Portugal on Sunday (18.2M) and USA/Ghana the previous Monday (11.1M) earned larger audiences.
Germany/USA ranks as the seventh-most watched non-football program in the history of ESPN or ESPN2. Four of the top seven are World Cup matches, including three this year alone.
The match also earned the largest weekday afternoon audience in ESPN history (excluding holidays). The previous mark was 6.2 million for the USA/Algeria World Cup match in 2010, and the high before that was 5.3 million for another USA/Germany World Cup match in 2002.
Univision chipped in 3.4 million for its coverage. The combined audience of 14.2 million trails previous USA games in this year’s World Cup — 24.7M for USA/Portugal and 15.9M for USA/Ghana — but is not far off the level of major primetime sporting events. The match actually topped two of last year’s six World Series games.
Among adults 18-49, the networks combined for a 5.2 rating. ESPN alone had a 3.9 in the demo.
(Thu. numbers from ESPN, Univision)
