Rebecca Lowe Thierry Henry Zlatan Ibrahimovic Alexi Lalas Fox Sports World Cup 2026 studio Credit: Fox Sports on YouTube
By Manny Soloway on

With the first full week of the 2026 FIFA World Cup complete, Fox is reporting record-setting English-language audiences.

Led by United States-Australia, Fox says last Friday was the most-watched FIFA Men’s World Cup day in English-language history.

Officially, the United States-Australia match averaged 16.22 million viewers (up from 14.78 million in preliminary viewership), ranking second only to the United States’ tournament-opening match against Paraguay.

Scotland-Morocco, which followed United States-Australia on Fox, averaged 9.17 million viewers. That is the fourth most-watched World Cup match in English this year. Later that day, Brazil-Haiti averaged 8.74 million viewers.

Fox set more soccer records over the weekend. On FS1 Sunday, Uruguay-Cabo Verde averaged 6.18 million viewers, good enough to become the most-watched soccer telecast in FS1 history. Later in the day, New Zealand-Egypt averaged 5.88 million viewers, which ranks as the second most-watched soccer telecast ever on FS1.

Michael Mulvihill, President of Insights & Analytics at Fox, noted that last week was the most-watched week in FS1 history, with a total-day average audience of 885,000 viewers.

Outside of FS1, Germany-Ivory Coast on Saturday was the most-watched match of the weekend, averaging 7.79 million viewers on Fox.

Viewership on Friday likely saw a boost from out-of-home viewing during the Juneteenth holiday. A report by Sportico found that out-of-home viewing has led to a 25% increase in viewership on Fox. Historically, holidays — especially Thanksgiving and Easter — have resulted in the largest out-of-home viewing increases.

The 2026 World Cup is the first to be televised with Nielsen’s expanded out-of-home viewing metrics. Viewership may also be benefiting from Nielsen’s shift to its Big Data + Panel methodology in September 2025, which expanded television measurement through smart TV devices.

Still, comparisons remain extremely favorable to 2022. In English, the three USMNT group-stage matches that year averaged 11.71 million viewers. The most-watched non-USMNT match in English in 2022 was Brazil-Serbia, which averaged 6.19 million viewers on Thanksgiving.

Notably, unlike Telemundo, whose World Cup audiences were reduced following a recent revision to Spanish-language viewing estimates, Fox’s English-language numbers were unaffected by the change.

With the United States already guaranteed a trip to the knockout rounds despite having one group-stage match left to play, it is extremely likely that even higher English-language viewership is still to come for Fox.

About Manny Soloway

Manny Soloway is a Iowa based writer focusing on TV ratings. He is also the founder of the TV Media Blog substack.

View all posts by Manny Soloway