Most-watched soccer games on US TV for June 13-19, 2017

The FIFA Confederations Cup kicked off last Saturday with the opening four matches averaging 1.3 million viewers across the networks of Telemundo. The highest viewership for the first round of play was unsurprisingly found on the second day as nearly 2.9 million people tuned in to FOX Sports 1 and Telemundo for Mexico’s opening match of the tournament. The game scored 2.3 million total streaming minutes to become Telemundo’s most-streamed match ever.

On the English-language side, FOX Sports 1 averaged 298,333 viewers for their first three broadcasts of the tournament with Cameroon’s match against Chile being broadcast on Fox Sports 2.

The National Women’s Soccer League hit a season-high 110,000 viewers on Lifetime last Saturday for a 1-1 draw between the Chicago Red Stars and Washington Spirit. The league is now averaging over 93,000 viewers with 12 regular season matches remaining to be broadcast on Lifetime.

Last Sunday’s match between the Philadelphia Union and New York Red Bulls averaged 239,500 viewers after bouncing around between ESPN2 and ESPN because of the NCAA Baseball College World Series. The match was forced to kick off on ESPN2, where it remained for most of the first half before jumping over to ESPN for the halftime show, second half and post-game coverage.

Here are the most-watched soccer games on US TV for June 13-19, 2017:

Average viewing audiences for soccer leagues on US TV:

Rank	Date	Competition	Teams	TV1	TV2	Total
1	6/18/17	Confederations Cup	Portugal / Mexico	FS1; 485000	Telemundo; 2400000	2,885,000
2	6/18/17	Confederations Cup	Cameroon / Chile	—; —	Telemundo; 1300000	1,300,000
3	6/17/17	Confederations Cup	Russia / New Zealand	FS1; 253000	Telemundo; 550000	803,000
4	6/19/17	Confederations Cup	Australia / Germany	FS1; 157000	Telemundo; 380000	537,000
5	6/17/17	MLS	Los Angeles Galaxy / Houston Dynamo	UniMás; 339000	—; —	339,000
6	6/17/17	MLS	New York City / Seattle Sounders	ESPN; 306000	—; —	306,000
7	6/18/17	MLS	Philadelphia Union / New York Red Bulls	ESPN/2; 239500	—; —	239,500
8	6/13/17	Int’l Friendly	France / England	ESPN2; 231000	—; —	231,000
9	6/13/17	CONCACAF WCQ	Panama / Honduras	—; —	Unvso; 132000	132,000
10	6/17/17	NWSL	Red Stars / Spirit	Lifetime; 110000	—; —	110,000

Average MLS viewing audiences on US TV:

Major League Soccer Averages
League	Overall*	ESPN	ESPN2	FOX	FS1	Univision	UniMás
2017 MLS	241,817 (30)	289,111 (9)	244,333 (3)	409,000 (2)	182,571** (15)
2016 MLS	257,683 (63)	290,179 (28)	201,500 (4)	658,000 (5)	154,346 (26)
2017 NWSL	93,111 (10)

					*English-Only
					**Data missing for 1 game