Most-watched soccer games on US TV for December 5-10, 2018

This past week saw eight soccer matches break 1 million viewers on television in the United States. It all started last Thursday evening with the first leg of the Liga MX Liguilla Semifinal between Pumas and Club América, which averaged 1.8 million viewers across Univision’s networks and tied with the reverse fixture three days later to close out the series and see Club América off to the Finals. The Liga MX Semifinals also saw a third match break a million as the second leg of the Cruz Azul/Monterrey series averaged 1.5 million viewers.

The MLS Cup Final between Atlanta United and Portland Timbers was the most-watched MLS Cup final since the inaugural edition on ABC in 1997. This year’s edition brought in 1.563 million viewers to FOX’s broadcast with 193,000 additional people watching on UniMás. This is even more impressive when you realize that the MLS Cup was in direct competition with the 2nd leg of the Liga MX Semifinal match between Cruz Azul and Monterrey (mentioned above).

Premier League numbers on NBC appear to be on the rise again as three consecutive weeks of growth culminated with the 1.1 million viewers for Saturday afternoon’s match between Chelsea and Manchester City. It was NBC’s first match to draw more than a million viewers in nearly three months with the last being the August 18 London Derby between Chelsea and Arsenal.

Telemundo and Universo’s coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Draw averaged 166,000 viewers, outperforming FS2’s live coverage by more than 10X.

Finally, the much-hyped Copa Libertadores Final reached its exciting conclusion on Sunday before a combined US Spanish-language audience of 1.15 million viewers shared between FOX Deportes and Telemundo.

SEE MORE: Access our archives of US TV ratings for soccer.

HT ShowBuzz Daily