One of our favorite pieces of content we release annually is our look back at the prior year and the amount of soccer on U.S. TV we’re privy to on a daily basis. In 2018 there were just under 2,800 matches across 37 different broadcasting networks. What did 2019 have in store?
Year-over-year increase in broadcasts
With just over 3,000 matches available for fans’ viewing pleasure, 2019 was a great year for soccer on television. We’ve been collecting this data each day for 5+ years now and it’s still remarkable to think that we as fans and marketers can watch – on average – over 8 matches per day… on TV, not even including OTT streaming. With such a high number of matches available comes a welcomed diversity in team and leagues available, which is great because not everyone wants to watch just the Premier League or Barcelona and Real Madrid. There were over 850 teams featured, from the Stanford women to Peñarol and Bursaspor to the New Zealand U17s. Check out our full graphic below for more stats.
Summer of soccer carries ratings
Buoyed by three major international competitions – the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Gold Cup, and Copa America – the summer was a major tentpole moment for the sport. While ratings numbers never reached the level of the summer prior, those three events accounted for 45 percent of the 100 most-watched matches of the year and averaged 2.9 million viewers per match.
Mexican soccer reigns supreme (again)
This should come as no surprise, but all things Mexican soccer related dominated the TV waves in 2019. If you thought the three major summer events accounting for 45 percent was intriguing, how about the fact that Liga MX, Mexican international (not including Gold Cup), Mexican U17 World Cup, and Mexican Concacaf National League matches combined for almost a third of the 100 most-watched matches of 2019, averaging 1.6 million viewers per match.
As always, a big thank you to World Soccer Talk and Live Soccer TV for the great work they do in helping make our daily data collection much easier.
Categories: Broadcast, Feature, Infographics, Television Ratings, TV Rights