USMNT scored a massive TV audience record. How many people watched?

Mexico‘s and the United States’ World Cup round-of-16 games both set TV viewership records — and the U.S. edged out Mexico in total viewers.

The U.S. men’s national team’s 4-1 loss to Belgium on July 6 averaged 45.1 million viewers in the U.S., while Mexico’s game versus England on July 5 averaged 44.9 million viewers.

The 45.1 million total is a record for men’s soccer in the U.S. and consisted of 33.1 million on Fox’s English-language broadcast plus 12 million on Telemundo and Peacock’s Spanish-language coverage, via a USA TODAY calculation of data from the Wall Street Journal and Fox.

The Mexico match, meanwhile, was split between 23.2 million who watched the Spanish-language broadcast on Telemundo and Peacock’s Spanish-language coverage and 21.7 million who watched Fox’s English-language one, per Sports Media Watch.

A wrinkle to the viewership data is the watchability of the matches themselves.

The Mexico game was a five-goal thriller England eked out despite being down a man for over 40 minutes. The U.S., meanwhile, played sloppily and trailed by two-plus goals for the final third of the match.

The total for U.S.-Belgium vaults men’s soccer into fifth place among major U.S. sports’ biggest single-event TV audiences, when counting each sport’s top event once.

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The NFL, a TV juggernaut, is far and away No. 1 — 127.7 million watched the 2025 Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The 1980 World Series gives MLB the third spot, as Game 6 that year between the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals was viewed by 54.9 million. In front of the U.S. versus Belgium match is tennis and its 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that averaged 50 million viewers.

Before this World Cup, the most-watched men’s soccer match in the U.S. was the 2022 World Cup final between Argentina and France, which averaged 26.73 million viewers. Earlier in the 2026 tournament, the U.S.’s round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina raised the mark to 36 million before USA-Belgium and Mexico-England broke the 40 million barrier.

That means the World Cup this year saw men’s soccer leapfrog men’s college basketball, college football and the NBA.

The U.S. versus Bosnia and Herzegovina match itself beat the biggest NBA viewership of 35.9 million — Michael Jordan’s final Chicago Bulls game in the 1998 NBA Finals versus the Utah Jazz.

It also broke a virtual deadlock with women’s soccer. The 2015 Women’s World Cup final between the U.S. and Japan in Vancouver, Canada, had an average viewership of 26.7 million.

The previous high before 2026 for the U.S. men’s national team was the 24.7 million that tuned into ESPN and Univision for the team’s 2014 World Cup group stage match versus Portugal in Brazil.

Prior to the U.S.’s knockout round games, Fox president of Insights and Analytics Michael Mulvihill estimated that had the U.S. reached the final this year, the average viewership could’ve hit 50 million.

Numbers in that area are similar to the NFL’s conference championship games. For instance, the 2026 AFC Championship Game between the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos reached 48.6 million viewers, while the NFC version between the Seattle Seahawks and the Los Angeles Rams drew 46.1 million.

However, the U.S. won’t be in the final in 2026. Still, the tournament features stars like Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi that could be huge draws going into the final on July 19.

Methodology note: Figures reflect average U.S. viewership for a single event or telecast where available. Records were compiled from Nielsen, Sports Media Watch, Front Office Sports, The Associated Press, Forbes, USA TODAY, Fox, and the Wall Street Journal. Figures are average U.S. audiences and may combine TV, streaming and English- and Spanish-language broadcasts where available. Measurement methods vary by year and source; older telecasts may not be directly comparable with newer cross-platform estimates.