Over 66 million Americans watched the World Cup final, smashing the soccer record again

A historic summer for soccer in the United States was capped off Sunday with one more record broken, as 66.4 million Americans watched Spain’s title win over Argentina.

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The audience showed up despite the game ending in a 1-0 score including extra time. Ferran Torres had the breakthrough in the 106th of what proved to be 140 minutes of game clock, counting all the stoppage time.

Fox reported an audience of 42.5 million for its English-language broadcast, a new high for a soccer audience on a single channel. Telemundo’s audience of 23.9 million also set a record for the biggest viewership of a soccer game in Spanish.

With the book now closed on the tournament, the big-picture view shows how much the world’s game broke through in America this summer.

A remarkable 63 games of 104 drew over 10 million viewers combined between Fox and Telemundo. Before this World Cup, 42 all-time broadcasts had topped that mark, according to data compiled by The Inquirer over the years. Thirty-one games of this World Cup drew over 15 million viewers; 18 over 20 million; 11 over 25 million; and five over 30 million.

Those five were the Norway-England quarterfinal (34.796 million); U.S.-Bosnia (36.195 million) and Mexico-England (46.690 million) in the round of 16; the U.S.-Belgium quarterfinal (50.125 million); and the final.

The top nine soccer broadcasts of all-time in the U.S. were recorded this summer, as were 11 of the top 15 and 14 of the top 20. Each of the new entries involved at least one of the U.S., Mexico, Lionel Messi’s Argentina, or star-studded England.

Take it out to the top 25 all-time, and 18 of them came this summer. Of the four additions, three had France, with Kylian Mbappé among many big names; and the fourth was Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal facing Luka Modrić’s Croatia in the round of 32.

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All these big numbers will not be lost on the networks, their advertisers, or likely the teams themselves. Some of them already knew how popular they’d be in this country, and the rest came to learn it.

Before this World Cup, the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history was the 2014 men’s final, which drew 27,314,274 viewers across ABC, Univision, and their respective streaming platforms. It now stands as No. 8.

The English-only record had stood since the 2015 women’s World Cup final, 25.632 million viewers for the U.S. ending its 16-year title drought in time zone-friendly Canada. The prior Spanish record was the 2014 men’s final, which became the first of Messi’s three title games.

When will these records be challenged again? That’s a big question around the sport. The next two women’s World Cups are in Brazil and the U.S., which opens the door for big audiences, but their broadcast rights here are currently held by Netflix. The streaming giant has not yet agreed any sublicensing deal to put some games on traditional television, and there haven’t been any hints about whether it will.

FIFA hasn’t done broadcast deals for the 2030 or 2034 tournaments, and now is racing to try to cash in. But it might struggle.

The 2030 tournament will be held in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, with a game each in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay to celebrate the men’s World Cup’s 100th birthday.

The 2034 tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia. It’s likely to be moved to the winter to escape the Middle East’s summer heat, as the 2022 edition in Qatar was. But that would again put games in the middle of the American football season instead of on their own summer stage.

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