Fox’s coverage of Monday night’s World Cup match between the United States men’s national soccer team and Belgium on Monday, July 6, drew record ratings, averaging 33,086,000 viewers, making it the most-watched soccer broadcast in U.S. history. These are numbers at the NFL level for the confrontation between Belgium and USMNT. In fact, this made
Fox’s coverage of Monday night’s World Cup match between the United States men’s national soccer team and Belgium on Monday, July 6, drew record ratings, averaging 33,086,000 viewers, making it the most-watched soccer broadcast in U.S. history.
These are numbers at the NFL level for the confrontation between Belgium and USMNT. In fact, this made it the most-watched broadcast on any network since Super Bowl LX recorded 125.6 million viewers on February 8.
If we take football out of the equation, the Belgium-USMNT game was the most-watched non-NFL telecast on any network since Game 7 of the World Series on Nov. 2, 2016 (40.05 million).
The US men’s national soccer team was eliminated from the World Cup when the competition ended up being thrashed by Belgium, which won 4-1 during the round of 16 in front of a sellout crowd at Seattle Stadium. Viewership for the match peaked between 9:15 and 9:30 pm ET, when an average of 41.03 million viewers were watching.
According to Fox, the top local markets watching the Belgium-USMNT matchup included Kansas City (19.80 rating/51 share), Boston (14.89 rating/38 share), Seattle (14.75 rating/50 share), St. Louis (14.48 rating/36 share) and Philadelphia (14.22 rating/38 share).
Overall for the Round of 16, Fox Sports reports that it has averaged 14.465 million viewers, making it the most-watched FIFA Men’s World Cup Round of 16 in American English-speaking history. That’s 216% more than the 2022 Round of 16 average on Fox and FS1 (4.581 million).
The 2026 World Cup has continued to be a ratings juggernaut for both Fox Sports and Telemundo/Peacock. Thanks to the World Cup, Telemundo reports that it has ranked as the number one Spanish-language network during the entire day for 25 consecutive days, from June 11 to July 5. On Sunday, July 5, Telemundo averaged the highest total daily average audience in Spanish-language television history, with 3.6 million viewers (led by the round of 16 matches of Mexico vs. England and Brazil vs. Norway).
The 39-day competition began on June 11 and will conclude on July 19.
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