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Fox/Telemundo Set New Record For U.S. Soccer Audience With WWC Final

Fox and Telemundo on Sunday night finished with a combined 26.7 million viewers for the U.S.-Japan FIFA Women’s World Cup final, marking the most-viewed soccer match ever on U.S. TV. The match passes the '14 men’s World Cup final, which saw ABC and Univision draw 26.5 million viewers for Germany-Argentina. Fox alone finished with 25.4 million viewers for its telecast on Sunday, passing last year’s U.S.-Portugal World Cup group stage match (18.22 million viewers) as the most-viewed English-language soccer telecast ever in the U.S. The ’99 WWC final on ABC -- in which the U.S. defeated China in penalty kicks -- now ranks third for an English-language soccer match with 17.98 million viewers. Looking back at the last WWC in '11, which was held in Germany and saw the final air in the afternoon in the U.S., ESPN drew 13.5 million viewers for the Japan-U.S. finale. Telemundo on its own drew 1.27 million viewers for Sunday’s U.S.-Japan match, marking the best Spanish-language WWC match ever but well below the 9.2 million viewers for Germany-Argentina last year. For the complete WWC, 52 matches across Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 1.82 million viewers, well above ESPN/ESPN2 from '11. St. Louis led all markets with a 1.94 local rating for all WWC matches, followed by DC (1.85) and Richmond (1.72) (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor)

MOST-VIEWED SOCCER MATCHES ALL-TIME IN THE U.S. (ENGLISH + SPANISH)
DATE
MATCH
ENGLISH
VIEWERS (000)
SPANISH
VIEWERS (000)
TOTAL
7/5/15
Women's World Cup Final:
U.S.-Japan
Fox
25,400
Telemundo
1,270
26,670
7/13/14
World Cup Final:
Germany-Argentina
ABC
17,324
Univision
9,200
26,524
7/11/10
World Cup Final:
Spain-Netherlands
ABC
15,905
Univision
8,821
24,726
6/22/14
World Cup group stage:
U.S.-Portugal
ESPN
18,220
Univision
6,500
24,720
7/1/14
World Cup Round of 16:
Belgium-U.S.
ESPN
16,491
Univision
5,100
21,591
6/26/10
World Cup Round of 16:
U.S.-Ghana
ABC
15,193
Univision
4,546
19,739
             

SHOCK & AWE: In N.Y., Richard Sandomir notes there was "some shock" at Fox regarding the "record size of Sunday’s audience." Fox Sports Senior VP/Programming & Research Mike Mulvihill said, "No question, I underestimated where this would be. ... I was blown away." Mulvihill thought viewership "might reach 19 million." He added that viewership figures "showed that 1.7 viewers in each home were watching the game, a little higher than usual for sports events." Mulvihill: “That suggested more group viewing than we anticipated." Desser Sports Media President Ed Desser said that a "perfect storm" of factors led to Sunday night's viewership numbers, including a "time of year with light sports competition, a strong American team to root for, a rematch of the 2011 Women’s World Cup finalists, and weeks of buildup." Desser: "This was an event, the sort of thing that galvanizes an audience" (N.Y. TIMES, 7/7).

BIG TIME EVENT STATUS: On Long Island, Neil Best writes the size of the audience "was particularly impressive because the game was an early blowout." The game "averaged more viewers" than last year's World Series Game 7 (23.5 million) (NEWSDAY, 7/7). In L.A., Kevin Baxter notes the average audience "was also better than every game in the recently-concluded NBA Finals," as well as the '14 Sochi Games (L.A. TIMES, 7/7). However, the N.Y. TIMES' Sandomir wrote World Cups and Olympics "come along every four years and are not directly comparable to annual best-of-seven series." Still, "it has to come as something of a surprise" that a "compelling" Giants-Royals Game 7 attracted two million fewer viewers. The '15 Duke-Wisconsin NCAA Basketball Championship, by contrast, "topped the women’s final with 28.3 million viewers" (N.Y. TIMES, 7/7). The N.Y. Daily News’ Bob Raissman said of the WWC, "It’s kind of got the Olympic feeling. ... You see so much crossover audience, because a lot of this stuff -- stories about the team -- are on media like the nightly news. You get a different kind of audience. ... People tune in. They want to be associated with a USA winner. The fact that they hung on ... to the end showed you they wanted to be there to celebrate with them." SNY's Jonas Schwartz added, "I think the Olympic comparison is a good one. ... Most of the people watching downhill skiing in the Olympics don't know what is going on, but they get into it; they’re rooting for the country. I think there is some of that" (“Daily News Live,” SNY, 7/6).

DIGITAL/SOCIAL: Fox Sports Go drew 232,000 unique streams for U.S.-Japan on Sunday, setting a record for the service. The top five events on Fox Sports Go are now all games from the WWC. Telemundo also saw 19,328 digital streams for the match. Meanwhile, data from Facebook shows that 9 million people had 20 million interactions during U.S.-Japan. The top three social moments on Facebook during the game were the final whistle, MF Lauren Holiday's goal in the 14th minute and MF Carli Lloyd's goal in the fifth minute. Women ages 25-34 were the most-active demo on Facebook during the game, followed by women 35-44 and men 25-34. There also were 98,000 tweets sent out when the whistle blew at the end of the match. Data from Twitter shows that 39% of those tweeting about the match were female and 67% were under the age of 25. For the complete U.S-Japan game, 3.4 million tweets were sent out in the U.S., seen by a unique audience of 11.1 million people (Karp).

HOME COOKING: TSN averaged 2.1 million Canadian viewers for the U.S.-Japan match, marking a record for a WWC final. That audience, however, was well below the 3.2 million viewers seen on CTV for the England-Canada quarterfinal. The five Team Canada matches across TSN, RDS and CTV averaged 2.3 million viewers. The WWC also saw 38,000 live streams on TSN.ca/FIFA (excludes TSN Go streaming) (Bell Media).

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