U.S. World Cup opener draws 24.9 million viewers, tops NBA Finals

The U.S. men’s World Cup opener against Paraguay drew a television crowd that rivaled the country’s biggest sports properties, with 24.886 million combined viewers across English- and Spanish-language coverage. The audience turned a Friday night Group D match into a mainstream event, not just a soccer spike, and it came in a 4-1 U.S. victory that featured Christian Pulisic, Folarin Balogun and Weston McKennie in the spotlight.

NBC Sports said 15.986 million viewers watched the English-language telecast on Fox, Fox One and Tubi, while another 8.9 million tuned in across Telemundo, Peacock and Telemundo streaming platforms. Fox said the English-language audience made USA-Paraguay the most-watched U.S. men’s national team telecast ever in English in the United States, while also setting a record as the most-watched FIFA Men’s World Cup group-stage telecast in English-language history. The English feed peaked at 18.86 million viewers between 10:45 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET.

The scale of the audience matters because it pushed the World Cup opener into direct comparison with the country’s most entrenched sports tentpoles. NBC Sports said the combined audience surpassed the first four games of the NBA Finals, which averaged 19.6 million viewers, and also topped the average audience for the 2025 World Series and the opening four games of the Stanley Cup Final. In other words, the U.S. men’s team did not merely beat other soccer programming. It competed with, and outdrew, the core broadcast inventory that typically anchors the American sports economy.

That crossover value is likely to matter more as the tournament advances. FIFA’s 2026 men’s World Cup is the largest edition yet, with 48 teams playing 104 matches across 16 host cities, and the United States is co-hosting the event with Canada and Mexico. The American draw is especially important for broadcasters and sponsors because the U.S. team’s games now carry the ability to pull in casual viewers far beyond the sport’s traditional base.

The next test comes Friday at Lumen Field in Seattle, where the United States is scheduled to face Australia at 12:00 p.m. in another Group D match. If the opener was any indication, the tournament has already moved past niche status on American television and into the same conversation as the country’s biggest live sports broadcasts.