Mexico fans watch a live broadcast during Mexico’s 2-0 loss to Brazil during the World Cup on Jul. 2. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Mexico may have been knocked out of the World Cup, but its successful run to the knockout stage helped to shatter all-time streaming records at FOX Sports and Telemundo.
FOX Sports, the exclusive English-language broadcast rights holder of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, set an all-time streaming record on Monday during the Brazil-Mexico match. The Jun. 27 Mexico-Sweden match on Telemundo holds the all-time Spanish-language record with 6.9 million live streams, the most for any event in NBC Sports Digital history, excluding past Super Bowls.
On FOX, the 2-0 knockout stage event clocked in as the most-streamed match of the tournament-to-date and the top-authenticated streaming event in FOX Sports’ history. The broadcaster recorded an average-minute audience of 538,000 and 1.4 million unique streamers during the game. On linear television, the Brazil-Mexico game delivered an average of 4.1 million viewers and peaked at 5.3 million.
Across all sports, FOX Sports reached 159 million streamed minutes and two million unique streamers on Monday, up 13 percent and 14 percent respectively, over the previous high set June 27. The streaming record was further buoyed by the Belgium-Japan game later in the day.
Through 18 days of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, FOX Sports has recorded a total of 2.5 billion minutes of digital consumption, including streaming, data pages, short-form video and social media.
Also on Monday, FOXSports.com had its best day in short-form video views in nearly four years, growing 1,412 percent compared to the prior 12-month daily average. Across streaming, social and digital platforms (which includes its content on Snapchat and Twitter), FOX Sports pulled in 632 million video views for all sports in June, with soccer driving 55 percent of views (324 million).
SportTechie Takeaway
Just as the Interactive Advertising Bureau predicted, the 2018 World Cup is shaping up to be a record-shattering event for streaming, inching closer-than-ever to linear TV. In North America, this success was led by fans in Mexico, which tuned in en-masse to watch Mexico’s upset over Germany, its 0-3 loss to Sweden and the knockout loss against Brazil.
The IAB predicted that 65 percent of consumers who had live streamed video previously would live stream matches during the month-long tournament, compared with the 71 percent it forecasted would watch live on linear TV. The spike in streaming this year has been a win for rights holders offering robust streaming options, including FOX Sports and the Spanish-language rights holder Telemundo Deportes.
FOX Sports, meanwhile, says its World Cup coverage on Snapchat attracted 20 million unique viewers in the U.S. through the group stage, with more than 70 percent of that audience under the age of 25.
