Fox drew just over 17 million viewers for Türkiye-U.S. in the third game of the FIFA World Cup group stage on Thursday night, and the 10pm ET match is now the second-best World Cup telecast ever in English, behind only the USMNT match against Paraguay to open the tourney. That opener did just over 18 million on Fox alone. The second USMNT match against Australia on a Friday afternoon did 16.2 million on Fox. Türkiye-U.S. also had head-to-head competition on FS1 from Paraguay-Australia.
Türkiye-U.S. peaked at 19.5 million viewers in the first half from 10:30-10:45pm. K.C. once again led all markets, followed by San Diego, St. Louis, Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth.
After the first two USMNT games had double-digit percentage jumps from preliminary numbers to Big Data figures (highlighting out-of-home), this game saw only a 7% increase with the 10pm ET start.
The 17 million viewers for Türkiye-U.S. beats out other big events like the most recent SEC Football Championship (16.9 million viewers), or Games 1 and 2 of the Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals (16.9 million and 16.4 million, respectively). Türkiye-U.S. just missed beating out the Indiana-Oregon CFP semifinal on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU (18 million), but beat out the Miami-Ole Miss semi (15.8 million).
