Despite the U.S. and Mexico exiting the World Cup before the quarterfinals, the event will set English-language records for matches across Fox, FS1 and Tubi, as well as Spanish-language records across Telemundo and Peacock. Through the U.S.-Bosnia & Herzegovina game in the Round of 32, Fox Sports remains up around 114% from the same point four years ago for the World Cup in Qatar, which aired in the winter amid football season and didn’t have a Round of 32. The increase comes amid 26.4 million viewers for that U.S.-Bosnia game, which marked an English-language soccer record in the U.S., passing the final of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final on Fox (22.3 million viewers). That’s a figure on par with most of the NFL Divisional Playoff games from this past season. Fox Sports President of Insights & Analytics Michael Mulvihill told Variety that there is also a “high proportion of multi-generational viewing that ... is incredibly valuable to advertisers.”
EARLY MOVER ON STREAMING: Telemundo/Peacock are averaging around 5 million viewers for its matches, up over 120% from four years ago. Much of that audience -- almost half -- continues to come from streaming. Former Telemundo Deportes President Ray Warren tells SBJ that comes from an advantage that NBCU started to establish in previous World Cups, when Fox did not yet have a dedicated streaming platform (like it does with Fox One now). “We were doing meetings every night in Qatar at 1am and the Peacock people -- it was like Christmas morning every day when we would hear the numbers that we had delivered,” Warren said of the 2022 streaming data. “There was no other tent to go in. They came into our tent. Some left and a whole lot didn’t. So yeah, it was the gift that keeps on giving.” Telemundo/Peacock tacked another 9.8 million viewers for the U.S.-Bosnia game, with 4.8 million of those from streaming. But Telemundo’s big win has come from Mexico games. Final numbers are not out yet, but preliminary figures show that Mexico’s loss to England in the Round of 16 will draw at least 23 million viewers, which already is a Spanish-language soccer record in the U.S., passing the 18.9 million for Mexico-Ecuador in the Round of 32.
RACKING UP THE VIEWS: The World Cup has easily become Fox Sport’s largest social media event ever, with over 7 billion views on official platforms entering Monday. Fox Sports social media accounts have added over 6 million followers, and over 1,000 of the videos posted have seen 1 million viewers each, led by analysts Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimović juggling a ball in the Fox studio (220 million views and counting). The group stage alone delivered 6.8 billion social media impressions (June 11-27), and fans were spending 2x the time engaging with World Cup stories on the Fox Sports app/website compared to the same point in 2022. These figures top the impressions on official NBC Sports accounts from the Milan Cortina Olympics (around 4.3 billion), as well as the 2024 Paris Olympics (6.6 billion). Meanwhile, on X, World Cup posts among U.S.-based users Wednesday around the U.S.-Bosnia match rose 92% compared to the prior week average, with an 83% uptick in unique post authors. Over on TikTok, the total number of posts using #WorldCup increased 60% from June 4 through June 30, while those using #FIFAWorldCup rose 55%. In the U.S., searches on TikTok for “World Cup” jumped 320% since the start of the tourney on June 11, while searches for “FIFA World Cup” are up 250%.
