USMNT’s Record Paraguay Audience Didn’t Survive the World Cup

Fox’s record World Cup television audience for the USMNT’s 4-1 win over Paraguay lasted 19 days. Belgium then beat the Americans by the exact same scoreline, 4-1, in the Round of 16, and more people watched that elimination than any match the U.S. had won all tournament.

Every Nielsen methodology change, out-of-home count and home-soil kickoff boosted Fox’s numbers whether the U.S. won or lost. The biggest crowd of the tournament tuned in to watch the Americans get eliminated.

Paraguay’s Record Didn’t Survive the Group Stage

Fox announced two different numbers for the same game. The morning after the USMNT’s June 12 win at SoFi Stadium, the network reported an average of 15.986 million viewers across Fox, Fox One and Tubi, with the audience peaking at 18.86 million between 10:45 and 11 p.m. ET.

Three days later, Fox revised the figure upward. An average of 18,037,000 viewers had actually tuned in, the network said, now calling it the most-watched men’s World Cup telecast in English-language U.S. history, with a peak of 21,526,000 viewers in that same late-match window.

That final number was up 132% from the USMNT’s 2022 World Cup opener, a 1-1 draw with Wales that drew 7.763 million viewers in Qatar. Fox credited part of the jump to Nielsen’s newer counting method, which folds “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes into its household panel, on top of Fox’s own Adobe Analytics and Tubi streaming numbers.

Not everyone accepted the record claim at face value. The USMNT’s 2-2 draw with Portugal at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil drew a higher number on ESPN, but ESPN and Fox counted their telecasts differently. “Both likely will claim the record,” Richard Deitsch, host of The Sports Media Podcast, wrote on X.

Paraguay itself arrived with real credibility, having beaten both Brazil and Argentina during South American qualifying. Oddsmakers including Caesars had priced the opener close enough to want a draw, which made the 4-1 scoreline, and the audience it pulled in, land even harder.

Two Bigger Nights Followed

Paraguay wasn’t the ceiling. Three more matches followed before the U.S. went home, and the record moved twice.

The Americans beat Australia 2-0 in Seattle on June 19, then lost 2-3 to a Türkiye side that had already been flagged as a Group D problem, a result that still left the U.S. atop the group.

Round of 32 brought the bigger jump. Sportsbooks had the Americans as prohibitive favorites over Bosnia and Herzegovina, so lopsided that Bosnia’s own odds to win sat at plus-475. The U.S. won 2-0 anyway despite playing the final half hour with ten men after Folarin Balogun was shown a red card.

Belgium beat the record again five days later, eliminating the co-host Americans 4-1 in the Round of 16.

Only two matches ever beat Paraguay’s opening-night number: a win and the loss that ended the run.

Did the USMNT Even Need to Win?

No. Fox’s single biggest audience of the tournament, 30 million viewers, watched Belgium eliminate the Americans on July 6, more than any of the USMNT’s four wins had drawn. That audience alone topped the entire 2022 World Cup final, when Argentina beat France in front of a combined 26.78 million viewers across Fox and Telemundo.

Reaction on Fox’s own air was blunt. “It’s a bit of a downer for us being out here now after this loss, but I felt like they lost the game before they even stepped out onto the pitch,” said Carli Lloyd, the two-time World Cup winner working as a Fox analyst.

Social media was harsher. “It’s certainly possible Team USA would have been better off tonight fighting for their lives as the ‘hopeless underdog’ without Balogun,” Skip Bayless wrote on X, needling a team that had opened the tournament to genuine goodwill.

Folarin Balogun, the forward Liverpool has spent months chasing in a crowded transfer market, served his suspension from the sideline as Belgium ended the run. ESPN’s bracket tracker had already flagged what was at stake before kickoff: a win would have sent the Americans to the quarterfinals for the first time in the modern era since 2002.

The Count Changed Underneath the Games

None of this year’s numbers compare cleanly to 2022. Four separate shifts inflate every figure at once.

• Big Data + Panel – Nielsen’s methodology, introduced last fall, folds smart TV and set-top box data into its traditional household panel, layered under Fox’s own Adobe Analytics and Tubi streaming counts.
• Out-of-home viewing – Bars, restaurants and fan fests have counted toward national ratings since 2020, adding roughly a fifth to a quarter of the audience on marquee nights.
• A 48-team field – The tournament expanded from 32 teams to 48, adding matches and scenarios that make any raw year-over-year comparison lopsided.
• A home time zone – Games kick off at U.S.-friendly hours this summer, unlike 2022’s shift to Qatar’s November calendar, which put the tournament up against the NFL season.

Fox’s own numbers show the pattern in action. Paraguay’s audience grew from a preliminary 15.986 million to a final 18.037 million within days, and Bosnia’s climbed the same way, from 24.4 million to a final English-language average of 26.4 million once the fuller count landed, plus another 9.8 million on Telemundo and Peacock.

“For many years, the numbers were under-counted and what we’re seeing now is a truer representation of the sports audience,” said Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ president of insights and analytics.

Telemundo Is Nearly Half the Audience

Fox’s English-language numbers get the headlines, but Telemundo is running almost even with them. Across the full group stage, Fox averaged 5.1 million viewers over 72 matches, up 92% from 2022. Telemundo averaged 4.6 million, up 122%.

“This is the most watched World Cup ever in Spanish language in this country,” said Miguel Lorenzo, a senior vice president at Telemundo Deportes. “Basically, half of the country of the United States is watching the World Cup in Spanish on Telemundo. But we also know that only 20% of the U.S. population is Hispanic.”

Nielsen data backs up the crossover Lorenzo describes. A fifth of Telemundo’s World Cup viewers list English as their primary language, meaning plenty of fans are choosing the Spanish broadcast on purpose rather than by default.

Fox and Telemundo Are Betting Big on What Comes After

There really shouldn’t be any debate at this point about whether soccer is popular or will ever be popular.

Mike Mulvihill told Deadline in an interview, adding that the real question now is what the boom means for the sport’s future in the U.S. Using Fox’s biggest property as the internal comparison, he said the World Cup’s reach “will be almost like having a second NFL season.”

The infrastructure behind that bet is real. Fox is carrying all 104 matches live across Fox and FS1, with every game also streaming in 4K on Fox One, the subscription service the company launched in 2025 and is now using this tournament to test for long-term retention.

The timing lines up with bigger moves across both companies. Fox Corp announced a $22 billion acquisition of Roku in recent weeks. Telemundo parent Comcast announced its own corporate split around the same time. Both moves are aimed at competing with Big Tech, and the World Cup’s ratings haul only strengthens Fox’s hand.

Mulvihill has projected that 150 million people will watch some portion of Fox’s World Cup coverage before the tournament ends. The network has already cleared the audience guarantees it made to advertisers, so it can now sell remaining commercial inventory for the later rounds at a premium.

Three Co-Hosts, One Final Left

The tournament that gave American television its biggest sports numbers in years no longer has an American team in it. Canada lost to Morocco, Mexico fell to England, and Belgium finished off the USMNT, so all three co-hosts are out before the quarterfinals.

The quarterfinals go on regardless. Fox’s bracket runs through a July 19 final, with the semifinals set for July 14 and the championship match still scheduled on home soil, just without a home team.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Non-US Match Drew the Biggest Audience?

Brazil’s win over Morocco drew 10 million viewers on Fox, the most-watched World Cup group-stage match in English-language U.S. history that didn’t involve the United States or Mexico, more than triple the non-USMNT match average from 2022.

Which US City Watches the Most World Cup?

Kansas City posted the highest local rating in the country for the USMNT’s opener, with more than 9% of the market’s homes tuned in, after the city hosted its first-ever World Cup match at Arrowhead Stadium.

Why Is Los Angeles Such a Big Combined Market for Fox and Telemundo?

Los Angeles leads the country in combined Fox-and-Telemundo viewership partly because of its size and large Latino population, but also because roughly 500,000 Iranian residents helped turn Iran’s 2-2 tie with New Zealand into the second-most-watched match in FS1 history, the Los Angeles Times reported.

How Do These Numbers Compare to Other Big US Sports Events?

Fox’s July 1 broadcast of the USMNT’s win over Bosnia and Herzegovina alone was on pace to outdraw this year’s entire NBA Finals average on ABC, which ran 20.6 million viewers across the Knicks’ series win over the Spurs and peaked at 24.5 million for the deciding Game 5, according to Front Office Sports.

How Much of the Audience Is Watching Outside the Home?

For the Paraguay opener specifically, about 3.6 million viewers, or 20% of the total audience, watched from bars, restaurants and other public venues, a lift that boosted Fox’s in-home average of 14.4 million by roughly a quarter, per Sportico’s calculation.