2023 Women’s World Cup: Spain’s victory over England in final draws record global audiences
Spain brought home its first Women’s World Cup title on Sunday, and the country certainly showed out in support.
The match was watched by an average of 5.6M people in Spain, according to data from Barlovento Comunicacion. That makes it the largest TV audience ever for a women’s soccer match in Spain.
With both England and Spain making their first appearances in the Women’s World Cup final, it makes sense that the countries would see record viewership. As Deadline reported earlier Monday, the match was watched by a peak of 14.4M people across the BBC and ITV.
While that didn’t match the audience for last year’s Euros final, the UK audience was well ahead of the previous women’s World Cup final between the U.S. and the Netherlands.
That’s not all. Even though Australia was defeated 3-1 by England in the semi-final (which was the most watched TV event in Australian history), the host country stayed engaged with the remainder of the tournament. The championship was watched by a high of 5.54M viewers.
The 2023 Women’s World Cup has managed record-breaking viewership across the globe. In the U.S., Fox’s coverage was up slightly from 2019, despite several challenges, including frustrating time zone differences and an unexpected early elimination for the USWNT. The average audience for the team U.S. group stage games was the highest it’s ever been at 4.3M viewers (including one overnight game).
Even without the USA in the competition, Fox still reported strong audiences throughout the rest of the tournament. The network has yet to release audience data for the final, though it’s likely to be significantly lower than any of these figures, given that the USA wasn’t involved and it was played at 3 a.m. PT/6 a.m. ET.
Globally, the final was expected to reach about 2B people, according to FIFA chief women’s football officer Sarai Brennan. A previous FIFA survey reported that just over 1B tuned in for the 2019 WWC.
