Published July 22
For this year’s World Cup, everybody ate.
Fox, NBCUniversal and even Google emerged from this tournament with record-breaking numbers. The biggest came in the final, when Spain’s 1-0 extra-time victory over Argentina drew an average of 38.9 million viewers on Fox, making it the most-watched soccer telecast and the most-watched World Cup final in U.S. history. Combined with 23.9 million viewers across Telemundo and Peacock, the match reached 62.8 million viewers, by far the largest audience ever for a soccer match in the United States. The Fox broadcast peaked at 51.7 million viewers.
The final capped a tournament that consistently rewrote the record books. The July 6 match between the U.S. and Belgium, where the former was knocked out, drew 30 million viewers on Fox platforms, becoming the most-watched U.S. soccer match ever. The July 11 match between England and Norway was the most-watched English-language quarterfinal telecast in the U.S. in World Cup history, with nearly 20 million viewers, while the July 15 England vs. Argentina match drew 15 million viewers, another English-language record.
Not bad, considering Fox was expecting at least 15 million viewers for each U.S. match.
Across the tournament, Fox averaged 7.73 million viewers per match, more than doubling its average for both the 2022 and 2018 men’s World Cups. The sustained audience growth, capped by a record-breaking final, suggests soccer has moved into the mainstream of American sports viewing. The question now is whether the Premier League, La Liga and Major League Soccer can convert a month of record-breaking audiences into year-round fandom.
NBCUniversal’s Spanish-language broadcasts on Telemundo and Peacock were equally impressive. The July 5 Mexico vs. England match initially set a record with 23 million views, only for the final to eclipse it with 23.9 million viewers across Telemundo and Peacock.
And who says traditional search is completely dead? Google stated that Google Search “saw its highest usage in history” on July 7 during the Argentina vs. Egypt match (though it did not provide hard numbers).
The event was a boon for advertisers as well, with built-in ad breaks called “hydration breaks” being available for the first time during U.S. telecasts (to the ire of die-hard fans).
The hydration breaks did reportedly see a slight dip of 2% to 3% in audience, according to an analysis by Octagon Media Rights Consulting reported by Sports Business Journal. But it wasn’t close to the kind of decline seen during halftimes of major sports events, the report said.
“It’s not nearly the impact that you think it would have,” Octagon Media Rights Consulting Director Justin Beitler told SBJ.
Still, Scott Young, co-founder of Transmit, sees the minimal decline as a sign that the wrong solution was incorporated for the right problem.
“A better approach would have been to adapt advertising to the flow of the game, rather than adapting the game to a traditional advertising model,” Young said. “Soccer already includes goal celebrations, substitutions, VAR reviews, injuries, set pieces and other moments when play naturally slows or stops.
“Those opportunities can support monetization without manufacturing new interruptions or undermining the continuity that makes the sport so compelling.”
Hydration break debates aside, the World Cup was a commercial triumph. It delivered the biggest soccer audiences in U.S. history, helped turn the final into one of the most-watched television events of any kind outside the NFL, and reinforced live sports’ value to broadcasters and advertisers alike. It’s no wonder that other media companies would want in on the action.
According to CNBC, Netflix, Disney and YouTube are vying to snatch U.S. World Cup rights away from Fox for the 2030 and 2034 tournaments (Netflix already has the rights for the Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031). Further, FIFA is reportedly looking to sell the English- and Spanish-language rights together.
Why this World Cup was a victory
There’s a number of reasons why this World Cup exceeded expectations, home field advantage being one of them (the tournament was hosted in the U.S., Canada and Mexico).
Heavily Spanish-speaking localities also pushed viewership to new heights. In Miami and Los Angeles, twice as many households watched the Spanish-language broadcasts as the English-language one, according to Madhive, an ad tech company that focuses on local media.
“For advertisers, the lesson is clear: World Cup audiences are not one-size-fits-all,” said Anthony Campanella, vice president of inventory partnerships and operations at Madhive. “The way fans show up in Miami looks very different from Seattle, Houston or New York. The brands that win around this tournament will be the ones that can connect national campaigns to local behavior, language preferences and real-world fan movement.”
Overall, this may have been the most-accessible World Cup ever for U.S. viewers. All 104 matches aired on Fox, FS1 and Fox One, Fox’s streaming platform that didn’t even exist for the last tournament in 2022. All matches also streamed on Fubo, and two opening matches streamed on Fox’s Tubi. And then there’s the Spanish-language telecasts on Telemundo and Peacock.
And lest we forget, Nielsen’s out-of-home measurement now covers 100% of the U.S., it says.
But the World Cup’s success didn’t happen in a vacuum. Live sports events of all shapes, across all platforms, are putting up huge numbers.
Last month’s NBA Finals was the most-watched since 1998; this year’s Winter Olympics nearly doubled the average viewership for the 2022 Games; Game 7 of last year’s World Series was the most-watched in nearly a decade. You get the idea.
Advertisers are obviously taking note. EMarketer projects TV sports ad spending in the U.S. to grow by 27% through 2030 to reach nearly $25 billion.
How could the World Cup elevate U.S. soccer fandom?
Will all this World Cup goodwill translate into sustained momentum for soccer in the U.S.? Some earlier signs suggested the answer could be yes.
Ahead of the World Cup, Major League Soccer said that viewership on Apple TV was up 62% year over year from February through April. YouGov said that the share of Americans who were likely to follow the World Cup nearly doubled compared to 2022. A Nielsen survey from earlier this year found that 33% of people in the U.S. expected their interest in soccer to grow because of the World Cup.
But unlike other major sports in the U.S. that are centralized around one league, soccer fandom might be more fragmented.
Aside from MLS on Apple TV, the Premier League streams live on Peacock in the U.S. CBS and ABC/ESPN hold rights to the National Women’s Soccer League. CBS has the Champions League, as well.
For what it’s worth, a report last year found that the majority of avid soccer fans in the U.S., 68%, prefer international leagues like the Premier League, while casual fans prefer MLS.
The World Cup showed the audience is out there for the taking.