The 2026 FIFA World Cup rolls on with Fox and Telemundo reporting strong viewership throughout the Round of 32, on par with regular-season NFL games.
According to Sports Business Journal, Fox Sports and Telemundo combined to average 16.9 million viewers during the Round of 32. That’s similar to the average audience for Monday Night Football last season.
Unsurprisingly, United States-Bosnia and Herzegovina led the way in Round of 32 viewership with 36.2 million viewers. Mexico-Ecuador was next with 29.3 million viewers.
Other strong viewership numbers included 26.2 million for Argentina-Cape Verde and 21.0 million for Portugal-Croatia.
Notably, on Telemundo, many of its most-watched games saw more viewers streaming on Peacock than watching on television. Unlike most U.S. broadcasters, NBC and Telemundo use Adobe Analytics to measure streaming viewership and Nielsen to measure linear television viewership. That gives observers the unique ability to compare linear and streaming audiences, but also raises some questions as to how comparable the combined figure is to the viewership figures published by other networks.
Across all Round of 32 matches, Telemundo says the average Spanish-language audience was 7.4 million, with an average streaming audience of 3.0 million on Peacock and its other digital platforms.
Streaming outpaced linear for marquee Round of 32 matches like Mexico-Ecuador (9.7 million on Peacock, 9.2 million on linear) and Portugal-Croatia (5.6 million on Peacock, 4.3 million on linear).
The strong viewership for Argentina and Portugal suggests that even without Mexico and the United States, Fox and Telemundo are still on track for record viewership. The most-watched game of the 2022 World Cup was the Argentina-France final with 25.3 million viewers, a mark that Argentina-Cape Verde surpassed this year.
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.