​Both Mexico’s and the United States’ round-of-16 World Cup games set television viewership records, with the United States narrowly surpassing Mexico in total viewers. The U.S. men’s national team’s 4-1 defeat to Belgium on July 6 drew an average of 45.1 million viewers in the United States, while Mexico’s match versus England on July 5 averaged 44.9 million viewers. The 45.1 million figure is a new record for men’s soccer viewership in the U.S. and breaks down into 33.1 million viewers on Fox’s English-language broadcast and 12 million on Telemundo and Peacock’s Spanish-language coverage, according to a USA TODAY synthesis of data from the Wall Street Journal and Fox. For Mexico, the audience was split between 23.2 million watching the Spanish-language broadcast on Telemundo and Peacock’s Spanish-language service and 21.7 million watching Fox’s English-language feed, per Sports Media Watch.
Context about the matches themselves adds nuance to the numbers. The Mexico-England clash was a five-goal thriller that England clinched despite being a man down for more than 40 minutes, whereas the U.S.-Belgium match saw the Americans play unevenly and trail by more than two goals for a substantial portion of the game.
In terms of overall significance, these U.S.-Belgium and Mexico-England viewership totals lift men’s soccer into fifth place among the biggest single-event television audiences for any major sport in the United States, when counting each sport’s top event once. Football remains the most-watched sport by a wide margin—127.7 million people watched the 2025 NFL Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. The 1980 World Series ranks third, with 54.9 million viewers watching Game 6 between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Kansas City Royals. Tennis’ 1973 “Battle of the Sexes,” featuring Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, sits ahead of those events with an average audience of about 50 million. Before the 2026 World Cup, the most-watched men’s soccer match in the U.S. was the 2022 World Cup final between Argentina and France, which averaged 26.73 million.
Earlier in the 2026 tournament, the United States’ round-of-32 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina set a record of 36 million viewers, which was subsequently eclipsed by USA-Belgium and Mexico-England, both surpassing the 40-million mark. That progression indicates the World Cup this year propelled men’s soccer past several traditional American sports in terms of live viewership, surpassing men’s college basketball, college football, and the NBA in peak single-event audiences. The Bosnia and Herzegovina match itself had viewers that topped the NBA’s highest single-game audience to that point—the 1998 NBA Finals Game 6 between Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz, which drew 35.9 million. The World Cup also closed the gap with the most-watched women’s soccer events; for instance, the 2015 Women’s World Cup final between the U.S. and Japan averaged 26.7 million viewers.
These records mark a new era for U.S. sports viewership, underscoring how the World Cup has become a dominant springboard for engagement with men’s soccer in this country. The previous peak for the U.S. men’s national team viewership was the 24.7 million who watched their group-stage match against Portugal in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, as measured by ESPN and Univision.