Liverpool Tottenham Champions League
Mike Koeshartanto

Soccer on U.S. TV – 2019 Summer of Soccer

…and just like that, another summer of soccer is over! It feels like just yesterday we were previewing the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Copa America, the Gold Cup and now we’re several weeks into the European season with MLS playoffs on the horizon. Before the months of June, July, and August drift too far from memory, let’s take a few moments to highlight the soccer on U.S. TV in another summer of soccer.

We know the FIFA Women’s World Cup was the marquee event of the summer and we covered it in earnest following another U.S. trophy. So, beyond the national team-related tournaments, there were still a TON of other soccer games… over 550 to be exact. What’s a good place to begin our dive? How about TV viewership numbers.

UEFA Champions League leads the way…

If we ignore the ratings behemoth of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, as well Copa America and Gold Cup, and we focus solely on the collective “other” – Liverpool’s victory over Spurs in the UCL Final was the most-watched game of June, July, and August. Continuing down that path, the team with the most appearances in the five most-watched games – Atlanta United. Thanks to a FIFA Women’s World Cup Final lead-in on FOX on July 7th, Atlanta’s MLS game against the New York Red Bulls was watched by over 1.6M people. The newly-contested Campeones Cup – pitting the Liga MX champion against the champion of MLS – drew another 1.5M viewers who tuned in to see Atlanta defeat Club América.

Here are the other games in the top five non-Women’s World Cup, Copa America, Gold Cup most-watched games:

  1. UCL Final: Liverpool vs. Tottenham | TNT & Univision | 2,958,000
  2. International Friendly: Mexico vs. Ecuador | Univision | 1,760,000
  3. MLS: Atlanta United vs. New York Red Bull | FOX | 1,609,000
  4. Campeones Cup: Atlanta United vs. Club América | 1,540,000
  5. UEFA Nations League: Netherlands vs. Portugal | ESPN, Univision, UDN | 1,490,000

Need. More. Stats.

Want more fun soccer on TV facts from the summer months? Well let’s go!

  • Between the three months, there were over 660 games – the most of which were in August (284), the least of which were in July (175)
  • The newly rebranded TUDN (formerly Univision Deportes) had exactly 25 percent of all summer TV broadcasts (166) – that’s a lot…
  • Club América and the Mexican National Team had the most TV appearances of the month with 16
  • There were over 1,000 individual broadcasts this summer, 54 percent of which were in Spanish
  • beIN SPORTS’ broadcasts of the Ecuadorian Serie A make it one of the most accessible leagues for American viewers (56 games)

For more interesting summer of soccer tidbits, take a peek at our recap below in graphical form:

Soccer on U.S. TV - 2019 Summer

 


As always, thank you to World Soccer Talk and Live Soccer TV for the assistance with daily data collection.

Categories: Broadcast, Infographics, Research