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Fans of Manchester United are probably trying to forget the drubbing their team got on Saturday at the hands of Messi & Co, but here is a fresh reminder: The ratings for the UEFA Champions League final, which is like the Super Bowl for European soccer clubs, came in this morning. The game between Manchester United and Barcelona, which Barcelona won 3-1, drew 4.2 million viewers on Fox and Fox Deportes (formerly Fox en Espanol). That was up 91% from last year’s final between Inter Milan and Bayern Munich and up 86% from the 2009 final, which also featured Manchester United and Barcelona. U.S. viewership of the UEFA Champions League final has grown exponentially over the past decade. The English-language viewing has gone from 264,000 viewers on ESPN in 2002 to 2.6 million on Fox this year. That, combined with a string of viewership records posted by last year’s World Cup, underscores the growing popularity of high-level international soccer in the U.S.
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Do you know what the worldwide numbers were?
US is finally waking up to watch this amazing game.
“Waking up” is right. I fall asleep anytime I try to watch this boring, low scoring sport…
And baseball ratings are really down. The world’s game is finally getting traction in the US.
I went to watch this game at a bar in LA but couldn’t get in for the first 15 minutes. First time I’ve seen a bar packed at 11am.
You must not go to many games…
Soccer is so much more enjoyable to watch than American football! There are only about 11 minutes of action in an American football game. Next fall I will be ordering the soccer channel so I can watch the English Premier League. I think you are seeing the results of all the pee wee soccer leagues that started 20 years ago.
Your post is dripping with sarcasm.Or at least I hope you are being sarcastic.
It’s not hard to enjoy high level soccer. This garbage being played by the MLS has a long way to go to catch up.
too bad fox’s coverage was/is dreadful.
You’ll still find better numbers on ESPN, a cable channel, for a prime time college football game.
I’d actually like to see the demographics of the 4.2 million who tuned in to watch the game on Saturday. I bet you the vast majority of them are of Hispanic descent.
I will take that bet. Frankly, your comment is borderline racist.
He’s racist by pointing out that approximately 1 out of every 1 Hispanic person is a soccer fan versus about 1 out of every 50 African or European Americans?
I don’t think it was racist at all.I think it pretty much a fact that soccer is bigger in the latin countries than it is in America.And with hispanic immigrants on the rise in the United States it wouldn’t be surprising to assume that they make up a large portion of the new veiwership, rather than Americans who have rejected the sports for decades finally warming up to it.
His comment also has the virtue of probably being true.
There were very few Hispanics where I went to watch the game…
According to Neilson’s there were 1.5 million Hispanic viewers of the match. That means 2.7 million viewers weren’t hispanic.
The only problem is that it’s so hard to watch other teams play after watching Barcelona play. They play such a beautiful game, they make other games look like lil boys are playing.
Everyone tuned in because these were supposedly the best 2 teams in the world, but Barcelona schooled Man U and had tougher opponents in the earlier rounds.
Best game in the world. You don’t need a pad/bat/helmet/shotclock.
Just a ball and let the feet do the magic. FIFA Street anyone?
Fantastic: 4 + million, not counting hundreds of thousands who packed the sports bars around the country.
Slowly but surely, the beautiful game is becoming America’s game.
And, we were treated to a special Barca team and a special player by the name of Lionel Messi. Simply amazing!
all i can say is liverpool will win next years league. Kop 4 life. Cherio
It’s easy for a sport like soccer to enjoy exponential growth when it goes from having all of a few hundred fans nationwide to having a few thousand fans nationwide. 2.6 million people in the U.S. watched a soccer game? Either they were all Hispanic immigrants, or those numbers are a lie. I’d be surprised if there were 26,000 actual fans of that dreadfully boring sport.
Wrong. There were 4.2 million who watched in the US — 2.6 million on Fox, and 1.6 million on Fox Deportes — according to Neilson only 1.5 million hispanics watched. That means the majority were not hispanic.
The U.S. will never be competitive in soccer because it isn’t really played in college. Until then the U.S. will continue to suck at it and most people won’t understand the game. Advertisers must hate it because there are no time outs or play stoppage except for half time. And YES the MLS and Mexican League games do suck because that’s the minor leagues compared to the English and Spanish leagues.
Soccer is a great sport once you understand its rhythms. It’s fast, artful, physical and without a helmet or a mask to speak of, its best players are like rock stars! I thought Fox’ coverage was mediocre. They actually used the NFL music stings which I found to be as lame as Eric Menafee’s lack of soccer knowledge. The biggest challenge will be camera angles and creating more intimacy in the viewing experience. They have the angles, we see them in replay and in Slo Mo, they just haven’t figured out how to integrate them.
Fox’s coverage was horrific. They treated us like children, similar to what NBC does for the Olympics. The difference being that in some obscure Olympic sports we do need a quick lesson. Futbol is the world’s most popular sport and deserves proper coverage and treatment of its viewers, much like ESPN did during the World Cup. Does Fox think we don’t know the difference between American Football and Association Football? Seems like it by slipping in Michael Strahan and Menafee.
To posters above, Mexican League is one of the top 10 ranked leagues in the world…look it up. MLS is absolutely a joke outside of NY Red Bulls, LA Galaxy, and Real Salt Lake.
I was in one of those packed bars after the first 2 I tried to go to were absolutely packed. Were there a lot of immigrants? Yes. The US is a nation of immigrants you dopes. These people and their kids are Americans and they will grow up watching Joga Bonito.
How are bar crowds taken into account for Nielsen ratings?
I just come to read the haters comments, they always make me laugh as their comments become more and more irrational and desperate in proportion with the increase in soccers popularity.
It really does not surprise me their comments are completely misinformed and oblivious to the facts as they are coming from a place of ignorance and prejudice to begin with.
It is ok to not enjoy a particular sport but to take the trouble to post such asinine negative comments says a lot more about these peoples rationale than the game of soccer.
By the way soccer has the highest percentage 18-35 demographic of viewers than any of the current big 4 sports in the US and I am not sure how figures growing exponentially is seen as failure not to mention the viewing figures for the last World cup.
Sorry to break up the hate fest with logic and reason. Ciao!
How can it be America’s game when we were watching a team from England play a team from Spain with no American players? Foreign soccer is a novelty. The last time we cared about soccer was the Cosmos and Pele. We need it to be played HERE!
You want MLS to become big? Spend money on it you idiots! We already have the best hockey, basketball, football, and baseball league in the world. Why can’t we have the best soccer league?
why the distinction between immigrants and others … are we not all viewers? … with Televisions?