While it’s no surprise that the U.S. team has commanded the highest TV ratings of the World Cup thus far, its rivals to the south are about to melt the needles off the Nielsen dials.In bumping off Ecuador 2-0 Tuesday night in the friendly confines of Estadio Azteca, Mexico has set up Telemundo (and to a lesser extent, Fox) for a post-holiday blockbuster against England. The long-frustrated English squad lends additional intrigue to the July 5 primetime match, as the Three Lions prepare to return to the site of a harrowing loss to Argentina 40 years ago.England looks to exorcise the grounds on which it suffered its catastrophic defeat at the Hand of God … and the left foot of Diego Maradona. Argentina’s 2-1 victory in the quarterfinals of the 1986 World Cup left England defenders feeling haunted; while Maradona’s first score wasn’t at all legit, his subsequent 60-yard solo dash to paydirt would later come to be remembered as the “Goal of the Century.”Mexico is also thinking back to 1986, as that year gave rise to the country’s best showing in the quadrennial tournament. Forty years ago, Mexico made it as far as the quarterfinals, where it reached the end of the road with a loss on penalty kicks to eventual runnersup West Germany.If England looks to chase away the ghosts of ’86 next week, it must do so at an uncomfortably lofty altitude. Estadio Azteca is perched 7,200 feet above sea level, and England coach Thomas Tuchel has allowed that his team doesn’t have adequate time to “physically adapt to” the massive boost in elevation that lies in store. (As it happens, the England squad’s U.S. base of operations is the famously low-slung burgh that is Kansas City.)England’s track record in matches played on higher ground is not stellar. The U.S. famously tied America, Sr. in their 2010 group stage opener, which was held in a South African stadium situated nearly 5,000 feet above sea level. The Lions would go on to suffer a demoralizing 4-1 loss to Germany that same year in a round of 16 match staged at an altitude of 4,600 feet.For all that, England opened as a slight favorite (-160) over El Tri, which has yet to concede a single goal at this World Cup. Mexico is famously tough to beat at Azteca, where it has won 88 of its last 90 matches.The additional intrigue should only serve to swell the TV numbers, especially for Telemundo. Through the group stage, Mexico has accounted for the NBCUniversal-owned Spanish-language network’s three biggest deliveries, with the June 18 match against South Korea averaging 14 million viewers across Telemundo and Peacock. (Per NBCU, 6.1 million of those impressions were served up via streaming, good for 43.6% of the overall turnout.) The June 23 Mexico-Czechia broadcast averaged 12.3 million total viewers, while the June 11 opener against South Africa drew 10.1 million.All told, Mexico’s three group stage matches averaged 12.1 million viewers on Telemundo/Peacock, up 71% versus the U.S. team’s output (7.07 million). By way of comparison, Fox’s out-of-home-boosted coverage of the first triad of U.S. games averaged 17.09 million viewers.With an average draw of 9.36 million viewers, Fox notched its best delivery for a Mexico match during the team’s 1-0 victory over South Korea. To date, this marks Fox’s fifth-largest World Cup audience of the cycle.Mexico’s primetime meeting with England was all but designed to serve up big TV numbers, as the Sunday night slot is largely unobstructed by potential audience-spoiling distractions. NBC has a Sunday Night Baseball outing set to air opposite England-Mexico, and while an NL West battle between the Padres and Dodgers looks pretty good on paper, the matchup may be particularly vulnerable in a head-to-head showdown with soccer. (Both MLB franchises boast outsized Latino fan bases.)Nor will Telemundo and Fox be sweating out ESPN’s 7 p.m. ET telecast of Fever-Aces, despite the fact that Caitlin Clark’s Indiana remains the WNBA’s top TV draw. The Fever’s most recent appearance on ABC averaged 1.7 million viewers. Meanwhile, TNT/HBO Max will counter with a NASCAR Cup Series race from Chicago; per Nielsen, last year’s analogous event averaged 2.1 million viewers.While Mexico has delivered for FIFA’s stateside rights holders, England has yet to move the ratings needle for either network. England’s 4-2 victory over Croatia on June 17 marked the team’s high-water mark in the group stage, as Fox averaged 6.78 million viewers, edging the 6.24 million it served up care of the following week’s 0-0 draw with Ghana. Inglaterra’s 0-0 draw with Ghana on June 23 served up a respectable 6.24 million viewers on Fox, while Inglaterra’s top showing on Telemundo proper was its 2-0 win over Panama on June 27, which averaged 2.47 million viewers.All things being equal, Telemundo and Peacock can expect to top the 20 million-viewers mark with Sunday night’s match, while Fox may add another 15 million impressions to the pile. As an aside, it’s probably worth mentioning here that Nielsen does not combine the deliveries for simulcasts that carry wholly distinct commercial loads; as such, the official reckoning for each World Cup audience will keep the Telemundo and Fox numbers at a remove from one another.(Rule of thumb: Ratings exist in order to validate the performance guarantees made to advertisers. While hoards of people with no vested interest in the business of buying and selling commercial inventory follow the TV ratings like so many box-office hawks, the reality is that the Nielsen data is effectively in place to measure advertising impressions rather than the material that surrounds the ads themselves. As such, Nielsen’s ratings-partition policy makes perfect sense, even if it seems to undermine the overall impact of a multi-network endeavor like the World Cup.)For Fox, the next blockbuster number should arrive courtesy of the U.S. team’s 2-0 defeat of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday night, although those deliveries may not be available until next week’s action is well underway. Belgium is next up for the USMNT, as the two sides get ready for a rematch of their 2014 meeting in Brazil.Belgium beat the Yanks 2-1 in their previous knockout stage match, which is remembered for U.S. keeper Tim Howard’s electrifying 16-save performance. No veterans of that 2014 U.S. squad remain active, but Belgium’s roster features three players who saw time in that round of 16 win. Given the primetime slot—kickoff is set for 8 p.m. ET on Monday, July 6—and a near lack of any viable sports competition, Fox is all but guaranteed to scare up around 25 million viewers with next week’s big match in Seattle.Through the 72 matches of the group stage, Fox is averaging a record 5.05 million viewers per broadcast, up 92% versus the analogous period of the 2022 World Cup, which was held in November and December. Telemundo and Peacock are averaging 4.6 million viewers per match, good for a 122% improvement versus Qatar, of whom 2.6 million viewers, or 56.5%, have tuned in via the linear-TV network.