The first USMNT match at the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup saw Telemundo, Fox and Tubi deliver the best soccer audience on record in the U.S., with the group stage match against Paraguay delivered a combined 27.5 million viewers in English and Spanish. That passes the previous combined record of around 26.7 million for both the 2022 and 2014 World Cup finals.
That combined U.S.-Paraguay figure is the same audience that Netflix drew for its top Christmas Day NFL game last year (Lions-Vikings). It’s slightly better than what Fox/Fox Deportes drew for Game 7 of the Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series last season.
Fox (with a Tubi simulcast) drew a little over 18 million viewers for U.S.-Paraguay, marking the best Men’s World Cup audience ever in English. The audience is still below the soccer-record 25.4 million viewers that Fox drew on its own for U.S.-Japan in the final of the 2015 Women’s World Cup. K.C. led all markets for Friday night’s U.S.-Paraguay match with a 9.2 local rating, followed by Boston (8.6), San Diego (7.3), Dallas-Ft. Worth (7.3) and St. Louis (7.3). Meanwhile, Telemundo set a number of records of its own with U.S.-Paraguay. The game marks the best USMNT World Cup audience ever on Spanish-language TV in the U.S. with 9.5 million viewers.
Fox and Telemundo also finished with 20.6 million viewers for Mexico-South Africa to open the World Cup on Thursday afternoon. For Telemundo, its 13.4 million viewers for the game marks the most-watched World Cup opener ever on U.S. airwaves, regardless of language, and the most-viewed men’s game ever in Spanish-language TV. Fox on its own drew 7.2 million for the match, marking the best World Cup opener ever in English only. San Diego was the top market for that match, followed by Austin, K.C., D.C. and West Palm Beach.
Both the Mexico-South Africa and U.S.-Paraguay matches saw huge upticks from the preliminary viewership numbers that were first reported by the networks over the weekend. The combined audience for the Mexico-South Africa opener jumped 12% from preliminary to Big Data, while U.S.-Paraguay jumped 11%.
Through the first weekend, World Cup games on Fox, FS1 and Tubi have averaged 6.7 million viewers, up 152% from group stage average four years ago. Telemundo is faring a little better thus far, averaging 7.5 million viewers through the first 12 games, which represents 53% of the World Cup audience in the U.S.
