Most-watched soccer games on US TV for June 21-28, 2017

Telemundo concluded their coverage of the FIFA Confederations Cup Group Stage averaging 1 million total viewers across all 12 matches. Mexico unsurprisingly led the way as the most popular team during the group stages by averaging 2.1 million viewers per match on Telemundo and an additional 521,000 on FOX and FS1. Chile also proved to be a huge draw for Telemundo, averaging 1.17 million viewers in their first three matches. Through the group stage, Telemundo Deportes’ broadcasts are up by 85% from Univision’s coverage of the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup in South Africa, which was played in a similar time zone.

In the women’s game, the NWSL on Lifetime reached a new high for the season as Saturday’s match between Orlando Pride and Houston Dash drew 123,000 viewers. The league is now averaging 96,100 viewers through 10 matches on Lifetime.

Major League Soccer made its return to the FOX broadcast network this week for the Hudson River Derby immediately following Mexico’s final Confederations Cup group stage match against hosts Russia. Although FOX shed 40% of its viewer count after the conclusion of Mexico’s match, it was still good enough to rank as the second most-viewed match on the English networks and the fourth most viewed overall in 2017. Major League Soccer will feature on FOX for the final time this season on July 30 as Atlanta United host Orlando City SC.

A pleasant surprise this week was the 300,000 viewers that tuned into the US Open Cup Round of 16 game between Cincinnati and Chicago Fire, which had more viewers than the Portland-Seattle derby on Sunday night.

Here are the most-watched soccer games on US TV for June 21-28, 2017:

Average viewing audiences for soccer leagues on US TV:

Rank	Date	Competition	Teams	TV1	TV2	Total
1	6/24/17	Confederations Cup	Mexico / Russia	FOX; 780000	Telemundo; 2200000	2,980,000
2	6/21/17	Confederations Cup	Mexico / New Zealand	FS1; 298000	Unvso; 1700000	1,998,000
3	6/25/17	Confederations Cup	Chile / Australia	—; —	Telemundo; 1290000	1,290,000
4	6/22/17	Confederations Cup	Germany / Chile	FS1; 329000	Telemundo; 915000	1,244,000
5	6/21/17	Confederations Cup	Russia / Portugal	FS1; 176000	Telemundo; 647000	823,000
6	6/25/17	Confederations Cup	Germany / Cameroon	FOX; 646000	Unvso; 82000	728,000
7	6/24/17	MLS	New York Red Bulls / New York City	FOX; 467000	FOXD; 51000	518,000
8	6/22/17	Confederations Cup	Cameroon / Australia	—; —	Telemundo; 454000	454,000
9	6/28/17	Open Cup	Cincinnati / Chicago	ESPN; 300000	—; —	300,000
10	6/25/17	MLS	Portland Timbers / Seattle Sounders	ESPN2; 294000	—; —	294,000
11	6/23/17	MLS	Houston Dynamo / FC Dallas	UniMás; 203000	—; —	203,000
12	6/24/17	NWSL	Pride / Dash	Lifetime; 123000	—; —	123,000
13	6/24/17	Confederations Cup	New Zealand / Portugal	—; —	Unvso; 67000	67,000

Average MLS viewing audiences on US TV:

League	Overall*	ESPN	ESPN2	FOX	FS1
2017 MLS	250,484 (34)	290,800 (11)	256,750 (4)	428,333 (3)	182,571** (15)
2016 MLS	257,683 (63)	290,179 (28)	201,500 (4)	658,000 (5)	154,346 (26)
2017 NWSL	61,000 (10)
					*English-Only
					**One game missing