History was made on multiple fronts as the US Women’s National Team captured the Women’s World Cup on Sunday. The team’s 5-2 victory over Japan propelled broadcasters to all-time highs as the match became the most-watched soccer contest (men’s or women’s) in US history. FOX’s coverage pulled a hefty 25.4 million average viewers to the channel, according to Nielsen, with a 12.9 rating, and peaked with 30.9 million viewers in the 8:30-8:45p quarterhour. That is good enough to best the previous high-mark for a single network set a year ago pitting USA/Portugal, and easily surpasses the previous high mark for a women’s soccer game, set in 1999. Meanwhile, FOX Sports GO set its own record with 232,000 unique streamers, to score the largest authenticated streaming audience in FOX Sports GO history.
Around the dial, Telemundo’s Spanish-language coverage of the game added another 1.27 million viewers to the mix, up 97% over the final’s coverage in 2011 and ranking as the most watched game of a FIFA Women’s World Cup in U.S. Spanish-language TV, according to Nielsen. Together the FOX and Telemundo coverage nabbed 26.7 million viewers in the States.