According to Nielsen, the US national team's dramatic Round-of-16 match against Belgium on Thursday was the highest-rated World Cup match ever shown on ESPN or ESPN2. The game earned a 9.8 average rating, better than any previous game in the tournament. It also beat the US-Ghana game from 2010, which had a 9.1 rating on ABC, a broadcast network, and was played on a Saturday afternoon.
Only two games on ABC (the 1994 final and the 1994 game between US and Brazil) outrated Tuesday night's telecast. The coverage peaked between 5:45 and 6 pm ET (the final 15 minutes of regulation), when the game hit a 14.1 rating. ESPN's streaming platform, WatchESPN, peaked at 1.5 million viewers during the game while averaging 3.5 million viewers.
The game averaged 16.5 million viewers on the network, making it the second most viewed game on the network ever behind the USA-Portugal game.
Univision had 5.1 million viewers and 1.8 million unique users on their streaming platform.
