Women's World Cup: USA-Vietnam Group Stage Kickoff Draws Crowd

A dominant 3-0 win by the U.S. Women’s National Team helped the Women’s World Cup get off to a strong start for Fox Sports and Telemundo on Friday night. Viewership of the USA-Vietnam match, which aired at 9 p.m. ET, came in just shy of the record set in 2019 by a comparable Group Stage match.

The Fox broadcast network brought in 5.26 million viewers for its live 9 p.m.-11 p.m. ET coverage of the game, held at Eden Park stadium in Auckland, New Zealand. Telemundo, which has Spanish-language rights in the U.S., averaged 1 million viewers for the game across linear and digital platforms, including Peacock.

The 2023 Women’s World Cup, hosted by Australia and New Zealand, is drawing heightened attention in the U.S. as Team USA pursues a historic third consecutive victory. The tournament runs through Aug. 20.

For Fox Sports, viewership of the July 21 USA-Vietnam match came in slightly below a 2019 Group Stage meeting between USA and Chile, which nabbed 5.33 million. But the 2023 turnout was up more than 99% from the tournament opener for USA in 2019, when the U.S. team played Thailand (2.64 million viewers). The audience for USA-Vietnam peaked for Fox Sports at 6.55 million from 10:45 p.m.-11 p.m. ET.

Interest in the game allowed Fox Sports and Telemundo set live-streaming records for early tournament coverage of the Women’s World Cup. Fox Sports reported an average-minute audience of 155,831 on streaming while Telemundo pulled in an average-minute audience of 152,000.

Across the U.S., USA-Vietnam on Fox drew its largest audience in Kansas City (with a 5.0 household rating/16 share) followed by Washington, D.C. (4.3/15), Austin, Texas (3.7/13) and San Francisco (3.6/15).

(Pictured: Lindsey Horan of USA and Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy of Vietnam)

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