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The first World Cup on U.S. soil since 1994 will also go down in history as the most-watched World Cup ever on U.S. television.
Sunday’s World Cup final between Spain and Argentina averaged 38.94 million viewers on Fox, shattering the record for the most-watched soccer telecast in U.S. television history, a record set only a couple weeks prior for the United States’ Round of 16 game against Belgium (33.09 million viewers). Excluding the portion of studio coverage that is included in the final measurement, Fox averaged 42.5 million viewers from whistle-to-whistle during the final.
The audience for Spain’s extra-time win over Argentina increased by 132 percent versus the 2022 World Cup final, which was played mid-December in Qatar and kicked off at 10 a.m. ET (France-Argentina, 16.78 million viewers). Versus the 2018 World Cup final in Russia, Sunday’s final increased by 240 percent (France-Croatia, 11.44 million viewers).
Fox’s audience peaked at a whopping 51.69 million viewers during the 5:45 p.m. ET quarter-hour, which coincided with Spain’s extra-time goal to secure the title.
Per Fox, Sunday’s telecast was the most-watched non-NFL telecast on any network since 2016, when Fox’s broadcast of Game 7 of the Chicago Cubs’ curse-breaking World Series win averaged 40.05 million viewers.
Overall, Fox averaged 7.74 million viewers per match for 104 matches across Fox, FS1, and Tubi this World Cup. That figure, as expected, also crushes the network’s previous averages of 3.58 million viewers in 2022 and 2.77 million viewers in 2018.
Incredibly, nine matches during this World Cup surpassed the viewership figure of the 2022 final, which was the most-watched men’s World Cup telecast in U.S. history before the 2026 tournament began.
On Saturday, Fox’s telecast of the third-place match, a wild 6-4 victory by England over France, averaged 13.13 million viewers, up dramatically from 2022 (3.96 million viewers) and 2018 (3.05 million viewers).
The viewership success of this World Cup can be attributed to many factors. The tournament being hosted in North America was the biggest. Matches were played in friendly time zones, something that had not been the case since Brazil hosted in 2014. A frenzy built throughout the tournament as matches were contested in and around many people’s hometowns. Of course, the USMNT’s hot start served as rocket fuel for the rest of the World Cup. And Fox’s commitment to put as many games on broadcast television as possible gave the tournament unprecedented reach.
It was easy to predict that this World Cup would be the most-watched in U.S. history, it was simply a matter of magnitude. It’s fair to say that this World Cup met even the loftiest viewership expectations some had coming in.
And this is just the English-language viewership. Once final tallies are released for Spanish-language viewership on Telemundo, Awful Announcing will publish an aggregate of U.S. viewership for the World Cup.
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