More than one billion people watched this year’s Women’s World Cup, in which the United States women’s national team beat Netherlands to win the competition for a fourth time.
A statement from FIFA revealed that a combined 1.12bn viewers watched the official broadcast coverage of the World Cup, which took place in France between June 7 and July 7, across all platforms — a record audience for the competition, with the USWNT competing in three of the five most-watched games.
TV viewers accounted for the majority of the global audience, with 993.5 million watching at least one minute of coverage, an increase of 30% on the 764m that watched the 2015 edition held in Canada.
An estimated 481.5m people accessed coverage of the tournament on digital platforms, which accounted for 43% of the total audience reach. The digital audience, which overlaps with the TV audience, was considerably greater than the estimated 86m in 2015.
The final between the USWNT and Netherlands was the most watched Women’s World Cup match ever, with an average live audience of 82.18m — up by 56% on the 2015 final audience of 52.56m — reaching a total of 263.62m unique viewers. The USWNT’s semifinal against England and their quarterfinal with hosts France also featured in the top five most-watched fixtures from this year’s competition.
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The 52 matches played in nine host cities throughout France were broadcast in 205 territories around the world, and the average live match audience was 17.27m viewers, which was more than double the 8.39m average of Canada 2015.