Airing eight hours earlier than in 2015, the Women’s World Cup Final delivered strong numbers despite a nearly 40 percent decline in viewership.
Sunday’s United States-Netherlands FIFA Women’s World Cup Final averaged a combined 16.9 million viewers across FOX and Telemundo — down 37% from U.S.-Japan in 2015, which aired in primetime (26.7M). Figures exclude pre-match coverage.
The U.S. win averaged 15.57 million viewers on FOX alone, down 39% from 2015 (25.4M), but the largest soccer audience on a single network since the 2015 final. It topped last year’s France-Croatia World Cup Final, which had 12.51 million on FOX. Keep in mind last year’s final earned a larger combined audience across FOX and Telemundo (17.83M).
Telemundo chipped in 1.3 million, about even with 2015. Including streaming, it had 1.6 million — the largest Spanish-language Women’s World Cup audience on record.
Viewership peaked at 19.60 million on FOX and 2.03 million on Telemundo.
The combined audience is the fifth-largest for any non-NFL sporting event this year, behind the national championship games of college football (Clemson-Alabama: 25.28M) and college basketball (Virginia-Texas Tech: 19.63M) and Games 5 and 6 of the NBA Finals (18.60M and 18.76M respectively).
Including pre-match coverage, FOX pulled a 7.7 rating and 13.98 million viewers — down 32% in ratings and 37% in viewership from 2015 (11.4, 22.32M), but up 4% in both measures from the 2011 Japan-U.S. final on ESPN (7.4, 13.56M). Including the streaming audience of 289,000 (+402%), a tournament-record on Fox Sports’ digital platforms, the audience was 14.27 million.
Over the past 20 years, each Women’s World Cup Final to involve the United States has exceeded 13 million viewers. By comparison, the 2003 Germany-Sweden final had 1.2 million on ABC and the 2007 Germany-Brazil final just 664,000 on ESPN2.
Austin, Tex., led all markets for the final with a 16.7 rating — down 13% from 2015 (19.1). The market delivered a 46 share, up 24% from 2015 (37). San Diego ranked second at a 14.9 (-24%) and a 42 share (+2%).
Washington D.C. (13.1), Kansas City (12.9) and Seattle (12.7) rounded out the top five.
[Numbers from Fox Sports, Telemundo, Telemundo PR 7.8; Fox Sports’ Michael Mulvihill/Twitter 7.8]
