Despite being available in far fewer homes in the United States, Telemundo is generating more viewers across television than FOX Sports after the first five days of the 2018 FIFA World Cup tournament.

Telemundo is in more than 53 million homes in the United States. FOX Sports, who have been broadcasting games on the over-the-air FOX network and FS1, are in 116 million homes (FOX) and 84 million homes (FS1) respectively.

On Spanish-language television, Telemundo is averaging 2.19 million viewers per game while FOX Sports is averaging 2.13 million, according to viewing data researched by World Soccer Talk sources including FOX Sports, Telemundo and Showbuzz Daily. That compares to the 2014 World Cup on ESPN networks that averaged 4.5 million after 64 games (the 2010 average was 3.2 million; 2006 average was 2.3 million).

Overall, when the viewing averages for Telemundo and FOX Sports are combined after the 14 games thus far, the 2018 FIFA World Cup is averaging 4.17 million viewers across US television.

Looking at the numbers below, Telemundo are generating greater viewing figures for most of the games that feature Hispanic or Portuguese-speaking nations. Likewise, FOX Sports generates more viewers for games involving non-Hispanic teams than Telemundo. The eventual winner in the TV ratings battle between Telemundo and FOX Sports could be determined by how far the Hispanic and Portuguese-speaking teams advance in the tournament, such as Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Peru, Colombia and others.

Ultimately, a deep run for Mexico will be a dream come true to boost Telemundo’s viewing numbers. For FOX Sports, Mexico will be a big plus but to a lesser extent than the Spanish-language broadcaster since the Telemundo has done a much better job with its World Cup coverage.

Here are the World Cup TV viewing numbers for June 14 through June 18. Note that the numbers shown below are for average TV viewership only and don’t take into consideration streaming.

MATCH # DATE & KICKOFF TIME GAME TELEMUNDO FOX SPORTS
1 Thurs., June 14; 11am ET Russia-Saudi Arabia 1,370,000 1,494,000
2 Fri., June 15, 8am ET Egypt-Uruguay 1,190,000 903,000
3 Fri., June 15, 11am ET Morocco-Iran 949,000 1,695,000
4 Fri., June 15, 2pm ET Portugal-Spain 1,840,000 2,924,000
5 Sat., June 16, 6am ET France-Australia 490,000 796,000
6 Sat., June 16, 9am ET Argentina-Iceland 2,210,000 2,973,000
7 Sat., June 16, Noon ET Peru-Denmark 2,450,000 2,001,000
8 Sat., June 16, 3pm ET Croatia-Nigeria 1,930,000 2,178,000
9 Sun., June 17, 8am ET Costa Rica-Serbia 1,660,000 1,826,000
10 Sun., June 17, 11am ET Mexico-Germany 7,120,000 4,002,000
11 Sun., June 17, 2pm ET Brazil-Switzerland 4,350,000 4,086,000
12 Mon., June 18, 8am ET Korea-Sweden 746,000 750,000
13 Mon. June 18, 11am ET Belgium-Panama 1,600,000 1,364,000
14 Mon., June 18, 2pm ET England-Tunisia 1,430,000 1,931,000
    TOTAL TV VIEWERS: 29,335,000 28,923,000
    AVG. TV VIEWERS: 2,192,083.333 2,135,666.667

We’ll update the soccer TV ratings data throughout the World Cup in our TV ratings archive.

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