20 Million Watched USA-England World Cup Match

The FIFA World Cup Group B match between the United States and England has been one of the most hyped since the draw happened earlier this year. With the match now in the books, it seems a lot of people bought into that hype.

The scoreless draw that helped England lock up the top spot in the group while the US plays for their World Cup life against Iran drew some big numbers.

According to Deadline, 15.4 million people tuned into Fox to catch the Black Friday match. Additionally, 4.6 million tuned into the Spanish telecast on Telemundo for a grand total of 20 million viewers.

Big World Cup audience, but not the biggest

While those numbers are no doubt impressive, it's not enough to dethrone the current record holder for the most-watched US soccer game in history. That distinction goes to the 2014 World Cup match between the United States and Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal squad. That 2-2 draw brought in over 24 million sets of eyes.

However, that was enough to make it the most-watched game of the 2022 FIFA World Cup so far.

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Telemundo's audience was the second-biggest it has had so far this World Cup, behind Thanksgiving Day's Brazil and Serbia match.

Of course, a major factor for the big audience was that the game was broadcast at a reasonable time on a de facto US holiday. People were still working through food comas or were coming down from trampling fellow shoppers for Playstations, and parked themselves in front of the tube for some soccer.

The United States plays Iran in a must-win match to try to advance into the knockout stage.

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Matt is a University of Central Florida graduate and a long-suffering Philadelphia Flyers fan living in Orlando, Florida. He can usually be heard playing guitar, shoe-horning obscure quotes from The Simpsons into conversations, or giving dissertations to captive audiences on why Iron Maiden is the greatest band of all time.