The answer to that question was a lot — more than 14 million on ESPN and Univision combined. Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE: DIS) ESPN and ESPN 2 nabbed 10.8 million viewers and Univision reported 3.4 million. The Thursday match trailed only last Sunday’s match (nearly 25 million viewers combined) and the opening U.S. match against Ghana (about 18.2 million viewers).
More interesting, perhaps, were the number of live Internet streams of Thursday’s match. ESPN reported that it served 1.7 million streams on its WatchESPN app, a record for authenticated TV Everywhere streaming. Univision offered free, non-authenticated streaming to an additional 900,000 viewers, a new record for the Spanish-language network. An authenticated stream is one that a viewer pays for as part of a subscription to cable or satellite TV and that is streamed through an app provided by the network.
Authenticated TV Everywhere’s largest ever audience averaged 850,000 per minute for the United States vs. Canada men’s hockey game at the Sochi winter Games in February. The largest audience ever for a non-authenticated sports event watched was this year’s NFL Super Bowl on a free stream from Fox Sports, which has since been put behind the company’s paywall. The game drew an average of 528,000 viewers per minute for each of its English- and Spanish-language broadcasts for a total of 1.56 million simultaneous streams.
The first U.S. World Cup game in the knockout round is set for Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. against Belgium. There are eight matches total between Saturday and Tuesday, and another four on Friday and Saturday of next week. The tournament semifinals are set for Tuesday and Wednesday July 8 and 9, with the championship game scheduled for Sunday, July 13 in Rio de Janeiro.
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