The latest meeting between the U.S. and Mexico was a strong draw on Univision, despite a small decline, and a much bigger one on Fox Sports 1.
Sunday’s United States-Mexico World Cup qualifier earned 4.5 million viewers on Univision and Univision Deportes Network, down 2% from the sides’ previous meeting in November, also in a World Cup qualifier (4.6M), and down 12% from their matchup in the 2015 CONCACAF Cup (5.1M).
Despite the dip, it was easily the largest soccer audience on a single network this year. Univision figures do not include pre-match coverage.
Coverage of the same match on Fox Sports 1 delivered nearly 2.3 million viewers, bringing the combined audience up to 6.8 million viewers.
Including prematch coverage, the FS1 telecast had a 1.1 final rating and 2.1 million viewers — up 57% in ratings and 63% in viewership from the November match (0.7, 1.3M) and 38% and 31% respectively from the 2015 contest (0.8, 1.6M).
On Friday night, the U.S.-Trinidad & Tobago match had 0.5 and 920,000 on Unimas/UDN and a 0.4 and 797,000 on FS1. The Mexico-Honduras match that followed scored a much stronger 1.3 and 2.6 million on Unimas/UDN and 0.1 and 293,000 on FS1.
[Numbers from Univision, ShowBuzz Daily 6.13, Programming Insider 6.9]
