FIFA Men's and Women's World Cup Final Historical Ratings

UPDATED AUG 2023

Below are the available Nielsen ratings for U.S. telecasts of both the Men's and Women's FIFA World Cup. The 1966 World Cup was not only the first World Cup to be aired in the U.S. (albeit on a 2-hour tape delay using the BBC feed), it was also the first full length soccer game to ever be aired on U.S. television. In 1970, ABC aired the World Cup Final on Christmas as part of its "Wide World of Sports" program, 6 months after it actually played. I currently don't have data for those 2 games, but hopefully they will be available once the Nielsen Pocketpieces for those years are acquired and scanned.

The World Cup Final did not air on National TV in either 1974 or 1978 as none of ABC, CBS or NBC chose to pay for the rights. In 1974 the Final was only available on Closed Circuit TV at select venues that patrons had to pay tickets for, and the New York Times reported that about 500,000 fans purchased tickets that year. The same was the case in 1978 for English-language games, but it was also broadcast in Spanish by Spanish International Network (today, Univision) which reached about 72% of Spanish Households in that year. It's unclear how many English-language tickets were sold in 1978, but it was reported that about 1,000,000 people were planned for.

1982 was the first time that a World Cup Final was broadcast live and ABC delivered a 6.6 HH rating with over 9 million viewers. Total viewership information is unavailable for the 1986 game on NBC as it aired during a ratings-only week, but its 4.1 HH rating was a noticeable decline from 4 years prior. The entire 1990 World Cup, including the Final, aired on TNT where it pulled about a 1.1 national HH rating and a 2.2 CVG rating (2.2% of HHs that had access to TNT). Since that point and aside from a particularly low-rated 2002 game, the FIFA Men's World Cup has delivered significant audience sizes in the U.S. with the most-recent game in 2022 logging the highest viewership total on record (16.8 million).

Over to the Women's side, 1991 was the first ever FIFA Women's World Cup and it exclusively aired on SportsChannel America which was unfortunately not rated by Nielsen. The 1995 Final did not air in the U.S. as the U.S. Women's team was eliminated from contention, and instead ESPN2 aired coverage of the 3rd place game which performed abysmally. Since then, viewership size of the Women's final has been dependent on whether or not the U.S. team is in the game or not. The 1999 Final, which featured a U.S. victory, ranks as the #2 FIFA Women's game of all time (18 million viewers) behind only the 2015 Final (22.3 million) which also featured a U.S. victory. The U.S. did not reach the final in either 2003 or 2007 and very few people tuned into those games.

FIFA Men's World Cup Final Ratings
Year	Net	HH Rating	HHs (000s)	P2+ (000s)	P18-49 (000s)
1966	NBC	-	-	-	-
1970*	ABC	No Ratings - Nielsen Black Week
1974	DID NOT AIR NATIONALLY
1978	DID NOT AIR NATIONALLY
1982	ABC	6.6	5,380	9,130	4,804
1986	NBC	4.1	3,520	-	-
1990	TNT	1.1**	1,000	-	-
1994	ABC	9.5	8,949	14,510	8,001
1998	ABC	5.7	5,604	8,624	4,887
2002	ABC	2.5	2,670	3,932	2,420
2006	ABC	7.0	7,756	11,961	6,507
2010	ABC	6.9	7,985	13,087	6,796
2014	ABC	7.5	8,687	14,107	6,613
2018	FOX	6.2	7,406	11,441	5,129
2022	FOX	7.0	8,710	16,784	7,422
*1970: Aired 6 months later on Christmas
**1990: 1.1 U.S. rating and a 2.2 cable coverage rating

FIFA Women's World Cup Final
Year	Net	HH Rating	HHs (000s)	P2+ (000s)	P18-49
1991	NOT NATIONALLY RATED
1995*	ESPN2	0.1	111	131	97
1999	ABC	11.4	11,307	17,975	8,404
2003	ABC	0.8	910	1,221	436
2007	ESPN2	0.5	526	664	357
2011	ESPN	7.4	8,579	13,458	6,168
2015	FOX	11.4	13,274	22,317	8,880
2019	FOX	7.7	9,192	14,041	4,956
2023	FOX	0.93	1,157	1,658	502
*1995: Ratings for the 3rd Place Game. U.S. did not air the Final

Source: Nielsen Media Research via NTI Pocketpieces and various online sources