The hosts are out, but the audiences have stayed.
The quarterfinals of the World Cup delivered their four largest audiences ever in the United States — in both English and Spanish — continuing to fuel a run of big ratings for Fox Sports and Telemundo. While they didn’t reach the record-setting heights of matches involving co-hosts Mexico and the United States in the previous round, any fears of viewers abandoning the World Cup after the hosts (including Canada, also out in the round of 16) were eliminated were unfounded.
Saturday’s match between England and Norway led the quarterfinals with 21.8 million viewers on Fox, based on final same-day Nielsen ratings. Argentina’s victory over Switzerland in the nightcap brought in 18.15 million. On Thurday, France’s win over Morocco delivered 10.25 million viewers in final numbers. Spain’s win over Belgium on Friday drew the smallest audience of the four with 9.87 million.
All four of those matches topped the previous English-language high for a World Cup quarterfinal in the United States. France’s win over England in the 2022 World Cup delivered 8.86 million viewers for Fox on a Saturday in December. Recent changes to Nielsen’s measurement, including more complete out of home ratings and the big data element, have tended to benefit live sports, but the England/Norway and Argentina/Switzerland matches, at least, are far beyond the marginal gains those changes would have added to prior years’ numbers.
Fox averaged 15.64 million viewers for the quarterfinals of the World Cup, up 150 percent from the 2022 tournament (6.25 million).
Telemundo and Peacock improved by 154 percent compared to the 2022 quarterfinals, averaging 10.4 million viewers over the four matches (vs. 4.1 million). England/Norway delivered 13 million viewers for the Spanish-language telecast, followed by 11.8 million for Argentina/Switzerland. France/Morocco averaged 8 million viewers, and Spain/Belgium drew 7.3 million.
Telemundo’s on-air broadcasts averaged 4.9 million viewers, an 80 percent gain vs. the 2022 World Cup quarterfinals. Peacock essentially quadrupled its audience from 2022, growing to 5.5 million from 1.4 million (outpacing the platform’s subscriber growth in that time).
The combined, cross-platform audience for the quarterfinal games in the U.S. are as follows:
England/Norway: 34.8 million
Argentina/Switzerland: 29.95 million
France/Morocco: 18.25 million
Spain/Belgium: 17.17 million
July 14, 5:40 p.m. Updated with Spanish-language ratings from Telemundo and Peacock.
