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TV ratings for the FIFA men’s World Cup have shot up compared to the 2022 event — which is not a huge surprise, given that soccer’s biggest prize is being played in North America this time.
Doubling the audience from the last World Cup, though? Even optimistic projections form Fox Sports and Telemundo might not have anticipated that.
“I was expecting to see our numbers grow. Was I expecting 122 percent over 2022? Probably not,” Joaquin Duro, executive vp sports for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, told The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday. “So it’s a surprise in some sense, but then you sit back and say, well, actually, we planned for this. We’re taking some of this credit for having a well-prepared plan.”
Across all English- and Spanish-language platforms, the group stage of the 2026 World Cup drew 9.65 million viewers per match. That’s a 105 percent increase over the combined total of 4.71 million for the 2022 tournament, which was played in Qatar in November and December. The audience was split pretty evenly: English-language telecasts on Fox and FS1 (and Tubi for a couple of matches) averaged 5.05 million viewers (vs. 2.64 million in 2022). Telemundo and Peacock, plus Universo and other Telemundo digital platforms, drew 4.6 million viewers per game (up from 2.07 million in 2022) in the group stage.
