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By Mallory Mattingly
We’re more than halfway through the FIFA World Cup, and viewership continues to soar.
This year marked the the United States’ 250th anniversary, which made the World Cup an even greater opportunity to show support for our country.
All three streaming platforms — FOX Sports, Telemundo and Peacock — have seen record viewership as wins for the US, as well as Mexico, England, France and Argentina, drive fans to the streamers.
And soccer is finding an audience in the US that it hasn’t seen before, thanks to “rivalries among teams and the charisma of star players,” Variety reported.
“We’re seeing numbers for some of these matches that we don’t see for anything but the NFL,” Michael Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ president of insight and analytics, told Variety about the World Cup.
The tournament has become a multi-generational event.
“We have numbers showing that more people are watching together than what we typically see in sports, and more parents are watching with kids than what we typically see,” Mulvihill said.
Related: World Cup Athletes Unite in Prayer Through Victory and Defeat
The United States 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32 garnered the title of the most-watched English-language soccer match of all time in the US. It pulled 26.4 million viewers.
Telemundo and Peacock added another 9.8 million viewers for the Spanish-language coverage. That brought the total to 34.8 million viewers for one match, according to Fox Sports.
The United States team might be officially out of the tournament as of Monday night, but that doesn’t mean new soccer fans should stop watching.
“If you’ve enjoyed what you’re seeing, well, support your local team,” Fox Sports announcer John Strong told viewers, per The Hollywood Reporter. “This doesn’t have to be the last soccer you watch for the next four years. It’s a beautiful sport.”
“The future of American soccer is very bright,” fellow analyst Stu Holden added.
Mulvihill seems to think these new fans are here to stay.
“The U.S. matches have out-delivered expectations, but what’s been more surprising is some of these matches that are between nations where the American sports fan doesn’t know a lot of players and they don’t even have that much familiarity with the country itself. A lot of those matches have done really well,” he told Variety.
“We had a Scotland-Haiti match that was up against the clinch game of the Knicks [NBA Finals] series, and that did 6 million viewers,” he continued. “We had Uruguay and Cape Verde that did 6.2 million viewers. Those are countries where not only does the American sports fan not know any of the players — a lot of us can’t find those countries on a map, and we’re still seeing huge audiences for these games.”
While the United States’ exit from the tournament marks the end of their historic run, the record-breaking viewership driven by diverse matchups and multi-generational appeal proves that American enthusiasm for the World Cup extends far beyond national borders.
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