The FIFA World Cup has brought the globe’s top soccer teams together for nearly 100 years, but the tournament has made its biggest splash ever in the U.S. with the 2026 tournament.
Just look at the record-setting games that transpired earlier this week: Monday’s U.S.-Belgium match scored a combined viewership of 42 million across Fox, Telemundo and Peacock, becoming both the most-watched soccer telecast in U.S. history and the most-watched Team USA soccer match in Spanish-language media history.
And on Sunday night, the Mexico-U.K. match brought in 44.8 million viewers across platforms, marking the most-watched non-USMNT FIFA Men’s World Cup telecast in English-language U.S. history, as well as the most-watched soccer match in Spanish-language media history.
The shift comes as the U.S., Canada and Mexico split hosting duties for the first time, making the matches more accessible to American audiences at reasonable times. Another draw has been the strong showings from both the U.S. and Mexico — up until their recent eliminations. And even beyond the U.S. and Mexico, the World Cup has had star power in full force, including Argentina’s Lionel Messi, France’s Kylian Mbappe, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, England’s Harry Kane and Norway’s Erling Haaland.
Telemundo and Fox’s streaming arms — Peacock and Fox One, respectively — reached beyond linear this year, giving both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking audiences an easy path to follow their team’s matches in real-time. And Fox more than doubled the number of matches on the broadcast network from 2022 to reach a record 72 matches.
The Spanish-language audience has been especially huge. Throughout the 72 matches of the Group Stage, nearly one out of every two World Cup viewers in the U.S. watched the games in Spanish, with Telemundo and Peacock capturing 48% of the combined audience.
“These results reinforce what we’ve believed from the beginning: today’s fans want to experience the World Cup on their terms — whether that’s on broadcast television, streaming, digital, or social,” Joaquin Duro, Telemundo EVP of sports and head of streaming, said in a statement to TheWrap. “Our strategy has been to build a truly integrated experience across every platform, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see audiences responding the way they have.”
The historic audiences show what a boost streaming availability has given the 2026 World Cup, and how the concerted efforts of broadcasters like Fox and Telemundo make all the difference. Especially as sports have become vital cornerstones of streamers’ strategies to keep subscribers engaged.
The biggest World Cup matches to date have solidly surpassed the NBA Finals, which averaged 20.6 million across five games earlier this summer, though are about on par for non-U.S. or Mexico matches. In fact, the U.S.A.-Belgium, which drew 30 million viewers on Fox platforms alone, hit NFL numbers and outpaced viewership for the NBA Finals Game 5 and MLB World Series Game 7. Comparisons to the Winter Olympics, which averaged 23.5 million viewers on NBC, Peacock, NBCUniversal Digital Platforms and Versant’s CNBC and USA Network, aren’t apples-to-apples, especially as the World Cup begins the quarterfinals Thursday.
That said, the complete round of 32 averaged 9.5 million viewers for English-language coverage on Fox platforms, while Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo and Peacock averaged 7.4 million viewers, up 61% over 2026’s group stage of 4.6 million. Those averages will surely heighten as the final rounds of the tournament kick off, though with Mexico and the U.S. out of competition, the broader appeal for some U.S. viewers might go down.
The tournament’s final, set for July 19, likely won’t get too close to the massive viewership of the Super Bowl in the U.S., which scored 125.6 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital and NFL+ in February. But given the growing audience for soccer in the U.S., it should be considered a victory that the round of 16 games for the U.S. and Mexico got anywhere close to a third of that audience.
The ratings wins for the World Cup’s distributors have extended beyond the matches themselves too, with Telemundo ranking as the No. 1 Spanish-language broadcast network in total day since the start of the FIFA World Cup, which Duro said is a “testament to our team’s commitment to delivering a multiplatform experience that keeps fans engaged throughout the day, not just during the matches.”
And on Peacock, nearly 80% of World Cup viewers are also watching non-World Cup content, lead by Spanish-language content like top 10 telenovela “El Señor de los Cielos”, Peacock originals like “Love Island USA” and Universal films, with the percentage steadily increasing throughout the tournament.
With all three host countries out of the mix as the World Cup enters the quarterfinals, the tournament hopes to keep the momentum going with its Super Bowl-style half time show for its July 19 final featuring Justin Bieber, Madonna, Shakira and BTS.
Perhaps the star power can arouse a Super Bowl adjacent audience.
Fourth of July soars on ABC and NBC
ABC’s festivities for the nation’s 250th anniversary reached nearly 50 million viewers for its 24-hour programming block. Highlights included “Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest,” which scored a viewership high of over 5 million viewers, more than tripling last year’s viewership of 1.62 million viewers. The Ryan Seacrest-hosted “Nashville’s Star-Spangled Bash also gathered 5.4 million total viewers and a 0.83 rating among adults 18-49. The special peaked from 10:45-11:00 p.m during the fireworks spectacular with 6.2 million viewers and a 0.99 rating in the 18-49 demo.
ABC’s coverage notably triumphed over NBC, which usually takes the cake. NBC averaged 5.1 million viewers for its 50th Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks special. The special scored 11.2 million viewers across NBC, Peacock and Telemundo, marking its best performance since 2018, rising 59% in total viewers. The special also scored is best performance ever on Peacock, up 140% in hours watched over 2025. On NBC alone, viewership was up 42% from last year to reach its best linear performance since 2019.
The Fourth’s baseball hits ratings home run
The Fourth also boosted Fox’s Saturday coverage of its two-game slate to reach 3.3 million viewers, marking the most-watched regular season game on any network since 2021’s MLB at Field of Dreams Game on Fox, which averaged 5.9 million viewers. It was also up over 70% from last year’s Fox Saturday baseball average of nearly 2 million viewers.
“Love Island USA” streaming takeover
The first week of Peacock’s “Love Island USA” viewing figures landed on Nielsen last week, dominating Nielsen’s overall streaming list for the week of June 1 with 1.31 billion minutes. Its debut viewership for Season 8 added 500 million minutes from the Season 7 launch last year, and, notably, 59% of that viewing time came from adults 18-34.
ICYMI:
- “Enola Holmes 3” debuted atop the Netflix’s top movie list with nearly 21 million views.
- The Season 2 debut of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” made a lukewarm splash at Netflix in its first week, but was bested by Harlan Coben’s “I Will Find You.”
- “The View” scored its most-watched Q2 in six years, TheWrap revealed exclusively.
- The “House of the Dragon” Season 3 premiere slayed nearly 22 million viewers, down 8% from Season 2
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