Nearly 63 million Americans tuned in to watch Spain beat Argentina in the FIFA World Cup final on Sunday, shattering viewership records and underscoring soccer’s growing appeal in the Unites States (US) after decades of efforts to broaden its audience.<\/p>\n
Held in New Jersey, the final \u200bremained scoreless until Spain broke through in the 106th minute to secure a 1-0 victory.
\nFox’s English-language broadcast attracted 38.9 million viewers, while Comcast’s Telemundo and \u200cits Peacock streaming platform pulled in another 23.9 million viewers for the Spanish-language coverage, the companies said. The combined audience far exceeded the 22.3 million US viewers who watched the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar.<\/p>\n
The strong viewership capped what analysts said was a solid run for the tournament’s broadcasters, with Fox and Comcast paying roughly $485 million and $600 million, respectively, for rights packages that included the World Cup, according \u200bto media reports.<\/p>\n
Several knockout-stage matches also outperformed recent championship games in other major US sports.<\/p>\n
The Round of 16 meeting between England and Mexico drew nearly 45 \u200bmillion viewers, well above the roughly 27 million who watched Game 7 of Major League Baseball’s World Series, when the Los Angeles \u2060Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays in extra innings, and the nearly 25 million who tuned in for Game 5 of the NBA Finals, where the New York Knicks \u200bended a 53-year title drought by defeating the San Antonio Spurs.<\/p>\n
While the figures remained below the nearly 126 million viewers who watched Super Bowl LX, when the Seattle Seahawks \u200bdefeated the New England Patriots, they marked a significant milestone for a sport long overshadowed in the US by American football, basketball and baseball.<\/p>\n
The tournament, co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico for the first time, benefited from prime-time kickoff slots for American audiences. Fans were also drawn by what could be the final World Cup appearances of a generation’s biggest stars, including Argentina’s Lionel Messi and his \u200blong-time Portuguese rival Cristiano Ronaldo. The last time the US hosted the tournament was in 1994.<\/p>\n
Fox One, which had the English-language streaming rights in the US, recorded 2.8 million \u200bsign-ups in June, its strongest month since the service’s launch in August and more than double the 1.1 million sign-ups generated during NFL Playoffs in January, according to industry tracker Antenna.<\/p>\n
Soccer’s popularity \u200camong Hispanic audiences \u2060also drove strong turnout on Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo.<\/p>\n
“Ratings have blown past internal forecasts for both networks, and it’s not close,” said Vicente Navarro, managing partner at soccer-focused marketing firm GotDigital.<\/p>\n
Navarro said a marquee 30-second advertising spot in the knockout-stage matches cost as much as $1 million, more than double 2018 levels. Major advertisers included PepsiCo, Home Depot, Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola, according to market intelligence firm SensorTower.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20530,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-40256","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Several knockout-stage matches also outperformed recent championship games in other major US sports.","published_date":"","news_description":"Several knockout-stage matches also outperformed recent championship games in other major US sports.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40279,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40256\/revisions\/40279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=40256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}