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MUMBAI: When the final whistle blew, it wasn’t just Spain lifting the trophy, it was football smashing the ratings scoreboard. The FIFA World Cup final between Spain and Argentina became the most-watched football match ever in the United States, drawing a combined 62.8 million viewers across Fox, Telemundo and Peacock and capping the biggest World Cup ever held in the country.
Spain’s 1-0 extra-time victory over Argentina delivered 62.8 million viewers, comfortably eclipsing every previous audience record set during the tournament. The figure is more than double the 25.78 million who watched the 2022 World Cup final, which attracted 16.78 million viewers on Fox and 9 million across Telemundo and Peacock.
The final also became the most-watched football match of any kind in US history, surpassing the previous record of 45.99 million viewers set by the United States’ round-of-16 defeat to Belgium by almost 17 million viewers.
Fox’s English-language broadcast averaged 38.9 million viewers, exceeding the US-Belgium record by 5.8 million. Audience numbers peaked at nearly 51.7 million between 5.45 pm and 6 pm ET, when Ferran Torres scored the decisive goal in the 106th minute.
Excluding pre-match coverage, Fox’s match-only audience reached 42.5 million, a figure surpassed only by its NFC Championship Game and Thanksgiving NFL broadcast last season.
On the Spanish-language side, Telemundo and Peacock attracted 23.9 million viewers, breaking the previous record of 23.2 million set only two weeks earlier during the Mexico-England round-of-16 clash.
The tournament’s semi-finals also delivered blockbuster audiences. Argentina’s comeback victory over England attracted 28.3 million viewers, comprising 16.9 million on Fox and 11.4 million across Telemundo and Peacock. Meanwhile, Spain’s victory over France drew 22.91 million viewers, including 13.11 million on Fox and 9.8 million on Telemundo and Peacock.
Even the third-place play-off generated remarkable interest. England’s 6-4 win over France averaged 13.13 million viewers on Fox—almost three times the previous English-language record of 4.76 million, set in 2010. Telemundo and Peacock added 7.7 million viewers, taking the combined audience to 20.83 million.
Across the tournament, Fox Sports averaged 7.74 million viewers on Fox, FS1 and Tubi, more than doubling the audiences for its previous men’s FIFA World Cup broadcasts, which averaged 3.59 million in 2022 and 2.77 million in 2018.
Spanish-language coverage also enjoyed unprecedented growth. Telemundo, Peacock, Universo and other Telemundo digital platforms averaged 6.3 million viewers, compared with around 2.6 million during the 2022 World Cup, underlining the tournament’s expanding appeal across English and Spanish-speaking audiences in the United States.
The record-breaking figures highlight football’s rapidly growing footprint in the US, with the expanded tournament turning the country’s biggest World Cup into its biggest television success story yet.
