Women's World Cup Viewership Trends: Group Stage, Part 2
With insights from Inscape.
The group stage of the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 provided plenty of excitement and more than a couple of surprises (Brazil and Germany have both been eliminated, while underdogs Morocco and Jamaica have advanced).
Before the round of 16 kicks off this weekend, Inscape shared some viewership trends around the second part of the group stage. (You can get insights around part one of the group stage here.)
From July 26 through August 1, the Women’s World Cup (English + Spanish broadcasts) captured 0.92% of all live, linear minutes watched on TV across all dayparts/episode types, putting it at No. 4 on Inscape’s program ranking behind Law & Order: SVU (1.18%), MLB games (1.10%) and Good Morning America (1.00%).
The two USWNT matches during this time period accounted for over half of all total game minutes watched, with the bulk (43.3%) coming from the U.S. vs. Netherlands match on July 26 — which makes sense, given that their next match against Portugal began at 3am ET on Aug. 1, a time when most U.S. viewers are sleeping. But even that game had a larger share than the No. 3 match, Panama vs. Jamaica, which occurred the morning of July 29 eastern time.
Looking at the local area markets, Milwaukee, Honolulu, Cincinnati, San Francisco-Oak-San Jose and Kansas City had the highest reach. Notably, Honolulu and Kansas City were not in the top five markets for the first part of the group stage.
For viewers that didn't tune into the U.S. vs. Netherlands match on July 26, these were the top programs by watch-time: Hannity, Chicago Fire, Blue Bloods, Chicago PD and Gutfeld!.