No Team USA? No One's Watching World Cup

Fox's rating for soccer extravaganza are down 42% over 4 years ago
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jul 4, 2018 12:04 PM CDT
Without US Team, World Cup Ratings Bombed
A fan of Poland holds up a scarf as he watches a World Cup soccer match between Poland and Colombia at The Garden at Studio Square NYC in New York on Sunday, June 24, 2018.   (AP Photo/Terrin Waack)

The lack of a US team caused a big viewership drop for World Cup telecasts, reports the AP. The 48 group stage broadcasts on Fox and FS1 averaged 2,069,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. That is down 42% from the 3.54 million average on ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC four years ago and down 15% from the 2,429,000 average on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC eight years ago. Excluding games involving the US team in previous World Cups, the average declined 28% from the 2014 tournament in Brazil and was up 1% from the 2010 tournament in South Africa.

Most group-stage kickoff times this year were morning EDT, starting as early as 6am, and the latest matches began at 2pm. Games in 2014 started mostly from noon to 4pm EDT, while in 2010 there were many matches at 10am and some as early as 7:30am. Twenty-six group-stage matches were aired on Fox, up from six on ABC in 2014 and four on ABC in 2010. Ratings include only television viewers and not those who viewed digital streams. Spanish-language coverage for Telemundo and Unimas, both part of Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal Inc., averaged 1.96 million viewers, including digital streaming. That was down 26% from the 2.64 million average on Univision and Unimas four years ago and up 7% from the 1.84 million average for Univision's networks in 2010.

(More 2018 World Cup stories.)

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