Fox finished with 8.4 million viewers for the U.S.-Germany FIFA Women’s World Cup semifinal game Tuesday night, marking the third-best audience on record for a women’s soccer match on U.S. TV. The game also ranks as the third-best World Cup semifinal audience on record -- men or women -- passing the previous mark set by the ’06 Italy-Germany semifinal, which drew 5.9 million viewers for a 3:00pm ET start on ESPN (aired on July 4). The U.S.-Germany match began with 1.6 million viewers at 6:41pm and peaked at a tourney-high 12.1 million viewers toward the end of the match in the 8:30-8:45pm window. The game also delivered Fox Sports Go 166,000 unique streams, marking a record for the app for any event. Fox and FS1 have now averaged 5.3 million viewers for six U.S. games, with four games on Fox alone delivering 6.0 million viewers. All WWC games across Fox, FS1 and FS2 have averaged 1.31 million viewers, well ahead of the event in ’11 on ESPN and ESPN2, when games aired primarily in the afternoon. St. Louis leads all markets for U.S. games across Fox and FS1 with a 6.0 local rating, followed by DC (5.6) and K.C. (5.4) (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
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MOST-VIEWED WOMEN'S SOCCER MATCHES IN THE U.S.
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DATE
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MATCH |
NET
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VIEWERS (000)
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7/10/99
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FIFA World Cup final: U.S.-China |
ABC
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17,975
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7/17/11
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FIFA World Cup final: Japan-U.S. |
ESPN
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13,458
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6/30/15
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FIFA World Cup semifinal: U.S.-Germany |
Fox
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8,400
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6/26/15
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FIFA World Cup quarterfinal: U.S.-China |
Fox
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5,700
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6/16/15
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FIFA World Cup group stage: U.S.-Nigeria |
Fox
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5,043
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7/4/99
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FIFA World Cup semifinal: U.S.-Brazil |
ESPN
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4,924
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SEEDS OF GROWTH: In N.Y., Richard Sandomir notes the Women's World Cup "is proving to be a strong performer" for Fox Sports. Fox Sports Senior VP/Programming & Research Mike Mulvihill "cited three factors for the increased viewership" from '11. The first is the fact a tournament in North American time zones is "likely to be seen by more people than one played in Germany" in '11. Mulvihill said that this enabled Fox to schedule all U.S. games in primetime, "at least for some of the audience." Mulvihill said that a second reason was putting 16 of 52 WWC matches on the Fox broadcast net as opposed to cable, which has "exposed more people to the tournament." The last reason is that grass-roots growth in women’s soccer "has expanded the audience" (
N.Y. TIMES, 7/2). Mulvihill said that the "greatest viewership increases are taking place among female viewers." That does not just include the "Millennial generation, as older Generation Xers and baby-boomers are also watching in growing numbers." Mulvihill: "Even though we’re in a business that’s very much youth-obsessed, I think it’s actually a good thing to see those older demographics set the pace, which suggests mainstreaming of the sport (is taking place)" (
VANCOUVER SUN, 7/2).
FOR THE COMMON MAN, OR WOMAN: Fox Women's World Cup Exec Producer David Neal said the tournament has become a "cultural event." He said, "The difference between a good, solid number, a good rating, and a spectacular one is if you start drawing in fans who may not know anything about soccer, who have just heard their friends talking about it saying, 'Wow, did you see that U.S.-Germany game yesterday? It was unbelievable!' And now they’re playing on Sunday." Neal: "What we remind ourselves every day in our production meeting is that we need to make every one of these shows accessible, because you’re going to have viewers coming in in exactly that mindset. They don’t know much about soccer but they've heard about it. ... We want to make them -- when we talk about storylines, when we talk about the game, when we talk about the strategy -- that we make it accessible and we make it easy to understand because we know this is a great opportunity we have where we’re going to be getting literally millions of viewers who probably haven’t watched one minute of the World Cup up until this one" (WASHINGTONTIMES.com, 7/1).
AROUND THE GLOBE: CTV and RDS combined to draw 3.2 million viewers for the England-Canada quarterfinal match, marking the second-best women’s soccer audience ever in Canada. The top is for the U.S.-Canada semifinal match at the ’12 London Games. In the U.S., FS1 drew 1.35 million viewers for England-Canada (THE DAILY). Meanwhile, German public broadcaster ARD averaged 2.63 million viewers for U.S.-Germany, which aired at 1:00am local time (DWDL, 6/1).
