Has more fuel been added to the #PayThemMore* fire?
Fox Sports coverage of the United States’ 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in Sunday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup Final delivered 14.3 million total viewers , up 22 percent from the audience for last July’s France-Croatia match-up in the Men’s World Cup Final and marking the most-watched soccer match on English-language television in the U.S. since the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup final.
Sunday’s final was 4 percent higher than in 2011, the last time the FIFA Women’s World Cup was played in a comparable European time zone. But even with streaming and Telemundo coverage folded in (reading 15.9 million), it fell well shy of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup final (which amassed 25.4 million viewers on all platforms).
* With a World Cup win, the max earnings for a USWNT player is $200,000, whereas a USMNT player can earn $1.1 million — this despite ratings and, more importantly, the fact that the U.S. women’s team brought in $50.8 million in ticket revenue from 2016-2018, while the men brought in $49.9 million (per the Wall Street Journal).
