The FIFA men’s World Cup is every bit of the viewership behemoth it was expected to be—and then some—as full audience data from the tournament’s group stage now attests.
Fox, the event’s English-language rights holder in the U.S., said that the entire group stage averaged 5.05 million viewers across the broadcast network, FS1, and the Tubi streaming service. That figure is up 92% from the 2022 event, which was held in the late fall that year due to heat issues in Qatar, and represents the highest group-stage viewership in U.S. history.
Telemundo, the Spanish-language rights holder, posted an even bigger viewership leap from four years ago. That network’s average group-stage audience of 4.6 million soared 122% compared to 2022, and also represents a record for the World Cup’s group stage. While U.S. Hispanics are 20% of the American population, the NBCUniversal-controlled Telemundo has captured 48% of the total domestic audience for the World Cup.
The viewership figures from the entire group stage provide further confirmation of the bullish numbers seen for many individual matches in the tournament’s initial weeks. Among the additional milestones recorded during the group stage:
The opening match for the U.S. men’s national team on June 12 against Paraguay averaged 18.04 million viewers on Fox, according to final data from Nielsen. That represented the most-watched World Cup match involving the U.S. men’s team in English-language U.S. broadcast history. The U.S. team’s latter two group-stage matches, against Türkiye and Australia, rounded out the three most-watched tournament broadcasts on Fox so far, averaging 17 million viewers and 16.2 million viewers, respectively.
