U.S. Women's World Cup Final Win Scores Soccer Ratings Record
Soccer fans and television fans both have something to cheer about after the U.S. Women's National Team won the FIFA Women's World Cup on Sunday: The Fox broadcast was the most-watched soccer match in U.S. history.
The 5-2 final match between the U.S. and Japan notched a staggering average of 25.4 million viewers, peaking at 30.9 million during the 8:30-8:45 p.m. EST timeslot as the USWNT closed out its epic win. To put those numbers in perspective, that broadcast easily beat out the previous soccer match champ, which happened last summer during the men's World Cup, when the U.S. men's team took on Portugal and scored 18.22 million viewers.
What's more, the rematch between U.S. and Japan also topped their last showdown during the 2011 Women's World Cup, when the U.S. lost to Japan on penalty kicks in the final match. The audience that watched Sunday's game was 89 percent larger than the one that watched four years ago, when 14.1 million tuned in. And as Deadline reports, the impressive stats don't stop there. The trade writes:
[T]he match drew a bigger audience than every game of the record breaking 2015 NBA Finals and the average of all the primetime series on the Big 4 in the 2014-15 season average, including Sunday Night Football. It just fell short of the 28.3 million who watched the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament championship game on CBS on April 6. Sunday's game from a packed BC Place was also the most[-watched] women's soccer match ever on Spanish-language TV with the Telemundo broadcast getting an audience of 1.27 million.
And to put another historical perspective on Sunday's match, the broadcast also beat out the storied 1999 Women's World Cup final, where the U.S. team bested China for its second title and nabbed 17.975 viewers. This time around, for its record third World Cup win, the U.S. women surpassed that number by 41 percent.
Congrats to the USWNT, congrats to Fox, and congrats to viewers; there's lots to celebrate today.
[via: Deadline, Fox Sports]
Photo credit: Getty Images