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Through the first round of games in the 2018 FIFA World Cup, TV viewership from the U.S. has dropped about 44% compared with the last tournament in 2014, according to data from Nielsen.
The drop is consistent across English-language broadcasts on Fox and the Spanish-language broadcasts on NBCUniversal's Telemundo (owned by ). Games on Fox have averaged 1.98 million viewers, compared with 3.55 million on ESPN in 2014. Telemundo's games have drawn an average audience of 1.87 million viewers, down from 3.3 million on Univision four years ago.
Together, the two networks paid more than $1 billion for the U.S. rights to the tournament in Russia and the 2022 event in Qatar, and now they both face the same headwinds. The U.S. team, historically the strongest draw for domestic viewers, failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament. Time zones also mean games start as early as 6 a.m. on the East Coast, earlier than the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Both networks are newcomers to World Cup broadcasts.
The tournament is also probably experiencing the effects of rapidly changing viewership habits, according to sports media consultant Chris Bevilacqua. There's a steady stream of people surrendering their cable subscriptions in exchange for digital offerings, a trend that's affecting nearly everyone in television.
"It's a combination of all these things that leads you to this drop," Bevilacqua said. "These numbers aren't necessarily a shock. This is probably along the lines of what the networks thought was going to happen once the U.S. failed to qualify."
For Fox , that's true across at-home television viewership and digital consumption, according to Michael Mulvihill, Fox Sports's executive vice president of research, league operations and strategy. That said, Mulvihill said Fox has been pleased by the audiences watching in bars and other public places — the reporting of those numbers are generally delayed — and the ratings on its cable network, FS1.
Last weekend's Germany-Mexico and Brazil-Switzerland matches were the two most-watched soccer games in FS1 history. World Cup content, coupled with coverage of golf's U.S. Open also meant FS1 reached more unique viewers than ESPN's main channel last week.
"That's the first time we've had the greatest reach of any sports network for an entire week," Mulvihill said. "That's terrific. That's been a bit stronger than we expected."
Earlier in the tournament, the company said that early-stage viewership was up 32%, compared with the average over the past four tournaments and excluding games played by the U.S.