World Cup viewership is booming in the US as knockout rounds begin
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — As the knockout rounds of the World Cup begin, Fox and Telemundo can be crowned as two of the biggest winners off the field.
Fox Sports is the tournament’s English-language television broadcaster in the US, and Telemundo is the Spanish-language broadcaster. Both networks broke viewership records during the World Cup group stage and expect even higher ratings in the coming days, with the US men’s national soccer team playing in prime time on Wednesday night.
Telemundo reported that its World Cup viewership is “pacing at more than double” the 2022 tournament in Qatar, with audience engagement “at historic highs.”
Fox Sports said 84 million Americans have watched at least some of its coverage through June 25.
That assessment comes from Nielsen’s TV and streaming measurement system, which calculates how many people have watched for at least one minute.
Fox’s president for insights and analytics, Michael Mulvihill, shared a stat that captures the level of commitment some fans are showing: “According to Nielsen,” he posted to X, 9,722 people have watched at least a minute of “ALL 48 of the first 48 World Cup matches on FOX and FS1.”
There are a few reasons why World Cup matches are generating NFL-level viewer interest in the US this summer. The most obvious factor being that the games are being played in the US, Canada and Mexico, which raises Americans’ overall awareness and puts matches in far more favorable TV windows.
More people are home from work and available to watch at 8 p.m. Eastern than, say, at 8 a.m., when many of the Qatar 2022 games were televised by Fox Sports.
More generally, soccer continues to grow in popularity in the US, and sporting events continue to compel people to watch live rather than on demand.
Nielsen is also measuring out-of-home audiences much more extensively than it did in the past, lifting the ratings for many sports.
Television executives say those viewers have always been watching at bars, restaurants and other locations, so now the ratings are a more accurate reflection of the real audience size.
President Donald Trump seemed to tout the TV ratings in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“The FIFA Numbers are far greater than any World Cup in History,” he wrote. “This is a Great Tribute to the United States of America. Thank you to all!”
There is no standardized way to calculate the worldwide audience for a tournament that airs on different channels and platforms across multiple countries.
But in the US, the numbers are certainly “great,” as Trump wrote. The June 19 match between the US and Australia averaged 16.2 million viewers for Fox, helping the day rank as the “most-watched FIFA men’s World Cup day in English-language US history,” Fox said.
The June 25 match between the US and Turkey averaged 15.8 million viewers for Fox, even though the US had already secured its place in the knockout round.
“For Fox,” NBC’s Mike Florio recently wrote, “the $485 million paid for the English-language World Cup broadcast rights in America may be the best investment the network has ever made.”
According to The New York Times, “the rights are worth as much as three times that amount,” but Fox won a bargain price for the 2026 rights as a result of a decade-old “decision to stave off litigation between Fox and FIFA.”
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