​Mexico-England and United States-Belgium matches from the 2026 FIFA World Cup are matching the eye-popping audiences typically reserved for NFL conference championship games, underscoring the tournament’s enduring strength at the national level. On Sunday night, Fox, Peacock, and Telemundo audiences for Mexico-England averaged 44.84 million viewers, a figure that reflects the World Cup’s broad appeal across multiple platforms. Preliminary data for United States-Belgium show an average of about 42 million viewers across the same broadcast partners, with expectations that final tallies could shift slightly higher when all numbers are finalized later today.
Fox released local market metrics for Mexico-England, highlighting Kansas City as a standout among metered markets with a 13.83 rating and a 40 share. In broadcast terms, the rating represents the percentage of all television households in a market tuning into the game, while the share indicates the proportion of households actively watching TV at that time who were tuned to the game. San Francisco also posted strong local metrics, recording a 13.38 rating and a 40 share, signaling robust engagement in key West Coast markets.
For context, the 2026 AFC Conference Championship game featuring the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos drew an average of 48.6 million viewers, while the NFC Championship clash between the Seattle Seahawks and the Los Angeles Rams averaged 46.1 million. By comparison, the 2022 World Cup final between Argentina and France drew about 25.31 million viewers in the United States, a figure that at the time ranked as the third most-watched soccer game in U.S. history, trailing only the 2015 Women’s World Cup Final (USWNT) with 26.7 million and the 2014 men’s final between Germany and Argentina at 26.7 million.
There are signs that the recent trend of American and Mexican audiences fueling World Cup numbers could ease as the tournament moves forward, though the possibility of continued high engagement cannot be dismissed. While the United States and Mexico are no longer in the tournament, viewer demand remains strong for matches involving non-U.S. teams as well, with marquee games continuing to draw substantial audiences that compare favorably to large-scale regular-season NFL events.
Looking beyond the U.S.-Mexico spotlight, World Cup matchups not featuring the host countries still attract solid numbers, generally aligning with the footprint of high-profile NFL regular-season games. Prior to Mexico-England, Brazil-Norway delivered about 28.37 million viewers across Fox, Telemundo, and Peacock—roughly in line with the ratings for the 2025 NFL Kickoff game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles, which attracted 28.3 million viewers, placing it as the ninth-most-watched NFL regular-season game that year.
This report will be updated with the final tallies for the U.S.-Belgium game as soon as the official numbers are released. The evolving World Cup data continues to demonstrate that premier international soccer events can rival, and in some cases exceed, the viewership levels of major American sports broadcasts, reinforcing the World Cup’s stature as a premier entertainment property in the United States. This analysis originated from Awful Announcing and reflects current trends in global sports media consumption.