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World Cup: USA-England draws big ratings
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The World Cup match between the United States and England drew big ratings for ABC, and the tournament as a whole is drawing far greater numbers than in 2006.ABC scored 13 million viewers for the 1-1 tie between the United States and England on Saturday (June 12), the biggest audience for a U.S. men's national team match since 1994. It's also the No. 5 soccer broadcast all time in this country, behind three World Cup Finals (including the 1999 women's final) and the U.S. men's round of 16 game against Brazil in 1994 (when the U.S. was the host country).
Had the game aired in primetime, it would likely rank among the top five telecasts for the week, trailing only the NBA Finals and about even with the Tuesday edition of "America's Got Talent."
Spanish-language broadcaster Univision logged an additional 4.1 million viewers for USA-England, bringing the total audience to a little over 17 million.
ESPN and ABC's broadcasts of the first five matches of the World Cup on Friday and Saturday -- all of them live -- averaged 4.9 million viewers. That's more than double the average audience for the opening games of the 2006 World Cup. ESPN's most-watched match so far was between Argentina and Nigeria on Saturday; it drew a little over 3.7 million viewers.
Univision, meanwhile, is averaging 3.2 million viewers over the first two days of the World Cup, including 5.4 million for the Mexico-South Africa match that kicked off the tournament.
The United States plays its next match at 10 a.m. ET Friday (June 18) against Slovenia.
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I'm so glad that I wasn't the only one watching! pretty good game, hopefully we make it out of the group!
The USA should do just fine but Slovenia won't be easy and the Algerians are a decent team...USA and England out of that group.
Im not a soccer fan at all and i watched it. The only time i watch soccer is during the world cup.
It really seems like the interest for soccer, especially World Cup soccer has grown substantially in the U.S. Interestingly there are also more American World Cup visitors in South Africa than from any other nation.
I don't like soccer because it's generally played too defensively--i.e., played not to win but to not lose (hence all the ties, low scores, etc). Nonetheless, I was going to give this game a try but I lost it (gagged) when I watched them doing their "warm-ups" looking like a bunch of little school girls practicing some dance routine.
good thing the world cup in on abc and not on nbc. nbc would of tape delayed it like they did for the olympics.
someone mentioned soccer played too defensivesly? i can name about 10 other sports that need defense in their game. Watching one or two games of a world cup dose not make you an expert on the sport to say soccer is too defensive. soccer like every other sport can be a defensive game, or high scoring game. What americans need to understand is that soccer is like a chess game. you are not going to wildly pass the ball and just shoot the ball towards the goal like a bafoon. which is why it takes a while to score. In chess you have to make the right move and decision, which is simmilar to soccer in a way. coordinated passes and technique is required. When goals are scored they mean so much more then other faster scoring type of sports. you have to watch for a while to understand and really try to get into the game.