Last week was a busy time for fans of Mexican soccer with high profile Club and National Team competitions at the forefront of peoples attention.
On Monday, Toyota Stadium in Frisco TX, played host to the blockbuster double-header featuring Campeon de Campeones and Super Copa MX. This special event was the first rendition of a new property conceived and owned by Liga MX and Univision.
Univision Deportes committed 10 hours of programming to the event that kicked off with Morelia and Puebla in the Super Copa MX match. This was followed by the main event, Campeon de Campeones, a trophy match between the winner of the Apertura season (Club America) and the Clausura season (Santos Laguna). Both matches were broadcast on UniMas and simulcast on UDN. With national bragging rights and $1M of prize money on the line Campeon de Campeon generated an impressive 1.1M viewers. Super Copa MX generated 368,000 viewers. The events helped spike interest and chatter around Mexican league futbol across the U.S. Google searches for Liga MX rose 855% last week!
Univision has big plans for the property moving forward with a vision to build a multi faceted sports and entertainment platform with broadcast, digital, experiential and hospitality offerings. For brands looking to reach the Mexican demo this is an opportunity to add to the consideration set.
On the national team front, it was a tricky road for Mexico in the CONCACAF Gold Cup. El Tri struggled throughout the tournament, benefitting from some dubious referee decisions, but ultimately came good in the Gold Cup Final against Jamaica on Sunday. Despite their struggles Mexico fans continued to tune in to watch their heroes, delivering impressive numbers for Univision. Overall Gold Cup TV ratings (through the first 22 matches) for Univision were up 35% from the 2013 tournament.
Total viewers for Mexico Gold Cup matches on Spanish-language TV.
Mexico vs. Jamaica (Final) = 5.7M (Univision/UDN)
Mexico vs. Panama (Semi-Final) = 4.4M (UniMas/UDN)
Mexico vs. Costa Rica (Quarter-Final) = 4.7M (Univision/UDN)
Mexico vs. Trinidad & Tobago (Group Phase) = 2.9M (UniMas/UDN)
Mexico vs. Guatemala (Group Phase) = 3.8M (Univision/UDN)
Mexico vs. Cuba (Group Phase) = 3.2M (UniMas/UDN)
Sunday’s Gold Cup Final also reached an audience of 2.9M people on Twitter, falling behind only the Final round of Open Championship golf and the USA vs. Jamaica semi-final match of the Gold Cup in terms of Twitter activity for the week.
With a 35 million strong Mexican community in the States, many brands look to soccer as a powerful connection point to this valuable demographic.
Categories: El Fanatico, Featured, Gold Cup, Hispanic Marketing, Social Media, Television Ratings