The United States fell out of the 2022 FIFA World Cup following a 3-1 defeat to the Netherlands on Saturday morning, and American broadcasters caught one last huge audience for the departure.
Between Fox and Telemundo’s platforms, the game averaged 16.546 million viewers. 12.966 million watched the English coverage on Fox (and its streaming platforms), with another 3.58 million watching on Telemundo (and its streaming platforms, which includes Peacock).
#USMNT #FIFAWorldCup Round of 16 showdown scores big on FOX ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/6UUYqOE5vd
— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) December 4, 2022
Argentina’s match is the 9th game with 4M viewers (4.45M). Netherlands v. USA averaged 3.58M.
Matches mark the 10th (1.26M) and 11th (1.18M) games on Qatar 2022 with over 1 million viewers across digital platforms.#MundialTelemundo pic.twitter.com/UeSLSXif2j
— NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises (@NBCUTelemundo) December 5, 2022
The fourth and final US match of the tournament drew the second-strongest audience. The group stage match with Wales averaged 11.71 million viewers. The England match on Black Friday averaged an unreal 19.977 million viewers. The group stage closer with Iran averaged 15.513 million viewers. When compared to the previous games, maybe 16.546 million could be considered a disappointment for the knockout game with the Dutch, though its early start time (10 AM ET/7 AM PT) didn’t help, especially when compared to the more palatable times for the group stage matches (2 PM ET/11 AM PT for all three).
But overall, its still a ridiculous number, on par with what the 1 PM NFL window draws each week on each of Fox and CBS. You really can’t argue that Fox is unhappy with the viewership that the tournament, especially for the four US matches, has drawn thus far.
