Mike Koeshartanto

Soccer on U.S. TV – February 2019

The shortest month of the year is over and spring is on the horizon! By the time you read this, Chicago will have gone over 130 days below 50 degrees, but you know what, that’s OK – we had plenty of soccer to keep us warm. February was definitely a top two month for soccer so far in 2019, so let’s leap into some numbers.

After a slower month of January, Liga MX was back with a vengeance in February with 11 of the 20 most-watched games. Those 11 matches accounted for over 10 million total viewers, averaging over 916,000 viewers per game. When you compare those numbers to the MLS numbers we’ll get to in March, you’ll see the Liga MX viewership domination continues. Back to February… the Premier League also had a solid month with five appearances in the top 20 most-watched games. Over 4.3 million stateside PL fans tuned into those games.

Two other match-ups of note in the top 20 most-watched games: the U.S. Men’s National Team game against Costa Rica after the annual January Camp had 960,000 viewers on FOX and UDN, while the most-watched UEFA Champions League game of the month, Manchester United vs. PSG, attracted 822,000 viewers across TNT and UniMás… wonder what happened in the second leg… c’est la vie…

Last point for this month, although it’s largely nothing new – the most-featured teams of the month all hail from Spanish-speaking countries thanks to OTA television deals that prominently feature teams from both Liga MX (Univision, UDN, UniMás) and La Liga (beIN Sports / beIN Sports Español).

That’s all she wrote for February – may the luck of the Irish bring your team some luck through the rest of March!

As always, thank you to World Soccer Talk and LiveSoccerTV for the help in collecting data each month.

Categories: Broadcast, Infographics, Liga MX, Premier League, Research