Fox Soccer Channel’s broadcast of the English Premier League game between Manchester United and Manchester City on Saturday, February 12th garnered the highest household average coverage area rating for a 7:45am ET EPL game in the history of the league being shown on U.S. television in that timeslot.

The broadcast, which began at 4am PT with pre-match analysis featuring Fox Soccer Channel’s Christian Miles, Warren Barton and Jamie Trecker, exceeeded ESPN2’s average coverage area rating (CAR) for the Saturday morning time window by 109% in households CAR (0.46 vs. 0.22), +82% in males 18-34 CAR (0.40 vs. 0.22), +82% in males 18-49 CAR (0.40 vs. 0.22), and up 46% in males 35-54 CAR (0.35 vs. 0.24).

Fox Soccer Channel’s 0.46 household CAR is the highest for a Premier League game on either Fox Soccer Channel or ESPN2 in this window since Fox Soccer Channel began being Nielsen rated in October, 2008. Average viewing audience numbers for the Manchester derby were unavailable at press time.

Fox Soccer Channel typically doesn’t show Premier League matches in the early Saturday timeslot (7:30am to 10am ET). Those games are generally shown on ESPN2 instead. However, Fox recently broke another record for their February 5 broadcast of Chelsea against Liverpool on Super Bowl Sunday where Fox Soccer Channel garnered their most-watched broadcast in the history of the TV network.

What are your thoughts about the ratings that Fox Soccer Channel achieved for its early Saturday broadcast? And do you think the game would have broken the record for the most-watched game on the network if it had been played live on a Sunday at 11am instead? Share your opinions in the comments section below.