​This piece originally appeared in Wednesday’s edition of The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter that covers the latest in sports media news, along with commentary and analysis. Sign up here to be the first to know everything happening in the sports media world. Millions of Americans dared to dream the impossible during Fox’s World Cup ad campaign, which captured the sentiment of the United States men’s national team’s once-in-a-generation run on home soil. Yet those same millions of fans were left with the familiar sting of disappointment as the USMNT’s momentum was halted by Belgium in a last-16 clash Monday evening.
This marked the fourth consecutive time the American men have exited a World Cup in the round of 16, excluding the fiasco of 2018 when the Yanks failed to qualify at all. As many viewers likely heard during Monday’s telecast, the last time the USMNT advanced beyond the round of 16 was 2002, when a quarterfinal berth stood as the lone modern World Cup achievement for the United States.
Still, the social media reaction on Monday night and through Tuesday, along with the record-setting viewership numbers USMNT games posted during this World Cup, suggested a resonance with this particular group that hasn’t always matched prior squads. Fox has cited about 30 million viewers for Monday’s Belgium game, a figure that will likely rise when Nielsen’s final tally is released. More than 26 million watched the knockout game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, and group-stage games drew near 20 million viewers. Those numbers don’t even include Telemundo’s Spanish-language audience.
To put these audiences in perspective, the USMNT’s viewership during this tournament resembled what you’d expect for a solid Sunday Night Football game or an NFL Wild Card round. The English-language audience for Monday’s Belgium match will probably surpass the College Football Playoff National Championship’s 30.1 million viewers once everything is tallied.
Undoubtedly, the home-field momentum helped bring in a large casual audience. The country genuinely felt the buzz, with fan fests popping up across the United States and sports bars turning into ad hoc watch parties for every game. And the time-zone advantage made this edition of the World Cup far easier to consume than the 2022 edition in Qatar.
There’s also a perhaps underappreciated factor: the newly expanded format. For the first time, the World Cup featured 48 teams instead of 32. The result was more days between games, allowing momentum to build. Rather than a match every four days under the old format, the U.S. played roughly once a week, a cadence that, in hindsight, offered better opportunities for sustained engagement and better search engine optimization.