Afternoon Edition

October 13, 2026

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Nielsen research, revealed exclusively at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit Tuesday, found a broad bump in U.S. television audiences for soccer since Spain closed out its championship in the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup nearly three months ago.

—Eric Fisher

First Up

First at FOS: The controversial Brian Flores memo prepared for the Raiders for one of their recent head coaching hiring cycles was unsealed.
Exclusive: The WNBA has rescheduled Games 3 and 4 of the Finals, allowing the Atlanta Dream to host their games at the 17,000-seat State Farm Arena.
As the NWSL’s Racing Louisville sits in limbo amid a possible relocation to Cincinnati, commissioner Jessica Berman tells FOS she’s ready to find a solution.
NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell tells FOS Michael Jordan is “all in” on the future of racing after a bitter antitrust legal fight.

Nielsen: Post–World Cup Soccer Audiences Surge Among Young Viewers

Front Office Sports

Soccer’s post–World Cup viewership bump is real and, for the involved leagues and networks, spectacular.

Nielsen said its proprietary research found a broad-based lift in U.S. television audiences for soccer since Spain closed out its championship in the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup nearly three months ago. The findings, which were exclusively revealed at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit Tuesday, show:

Post–World Cup audiences for 10 Major League Soccer matches on Fox and FS1 have risen 55% among men 18–34 and by 29% among adults 18–34, two of the most coveted demographics among advertisers, compared with pre-tournament regular-season matches. That data does not include MLS coverage on Apple TV, which was brought out this year from behind a second streaming paywall.
Viewership of England’s Premier League on NBC and the USA Network is up 30% among adults 18–34, including Spanish broadcasts.
Audiences for Spain’s LaLiga on ESPN platforms are up 60% among adults 18–34 and up 42% year over year across all of its English- and Spanish-language broadcasts.

Overall, Nielsen’s own Fan Insights data found the number of U.S. residents identifying as soccer fans rose from 66.8 million in July 2025 to 75.2 million in July 2026, representing a 13% lift. Since 2022, Nielsen found U.S. soccer fandom rose by 27%, an increase of 16 million fans, while MLS fandom rose by 28%, or 11.7 million fans.

“The journey started when the World Cup was granted—it didn’t start this summer,” MLS commissioner Don Garber told FOS editor-in-chief Dan Roberts onstage at Tuned In on Tuesday. “What we’re looking for as a sport is to grow the market. When I came into MLS, there was no market. … Our first goal was to build a market where we could come in and deliver something for local fans. And we did that over a period of time. … Now you’ve got to have the product that people care about. And frankly, that’s just about money and development.”

The extended fan interest in soccer is hardly surprising. The World Cup ended with record viewership in the U.S., with Fox seeing a 116% lift in viewership compared to 2022, with a tournament average of 7.74 million viewers, while Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo rose 143% to an average of 6.3 million viewers.

The title match between Spain and Argentina on July 19 averaged 66.4 million viewers, representing by far the most-watched soccer match of any type in U.S. history, and the largest audience on American television since February’s Super Bowl LX.

“Our data shows that fandom is not only reaching record highs, but it is also expanding rapidly among younger, diverse audiences and carrying over into major domestic and international leagues,” Nielsen global head of sports Seth Ladetsky said in a statement.

Following the final, leagues such as MLS made a concerted effort to leverage the incoming fan interest, and the North American league rolled out an extensive marketing campaign entitled “Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here.”

Immediately following the World Cup, several teams saw boosts in ticket and merchandise sales. A Philadelphia Union spokesperson told FOS in late July that single-game ticket sales went up by 218% since the start of the tournament, while Nashville SC said it saw a 161% increase in online ticket sales during the same period.

Reporter Margaret Fleming contributed to this story.

The World’s Best Banks on Us

Golf is more than a game; it’s a discipline. A pursuit of precision, patience, and progress. At Huntington Bank, we see money the same way. For 160 years, Huntington has helped people achieve their full potential in money, business, and life. Now, we’re bringing that same commitment to professional, collegiate, and amateur golf, supporting player journeys and partnering with ambassadors like world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. Through the accomplishments of great players, golf fans around the world recognize the rewards of patience, prudence, and perseverance, the principles that have guided our mission from the start.

ONE BIG FIG

MLS Keeps Growing

Casey Gower-Imagn Images

$25 billion

That’s what outgoing MLS commissioner Don Garber said the league’s enterprise value has nearly reached. “There are folks who came into MLS in the early days and it was $5 million to invest to get in,” Garber told Front Office Sports editor-in-chief Dan Roberts at the Tuned In sports media summit. “Now, we have teams valued over $1 billion. Several of them.” Garber said last year that the league’s enterprise value was more than $20 billion.

LOUD AND CLEAR

Calling Out CFP

Nadia DeMarinis-Front Office Sports

“Really, what it is is it’s an ATM to bail out very bad decision-making from, and I use this term loosely, leadership in college football.”

—Josh Pate slammed the idea of an expanded College Football Playoff at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit Tuesday.

Pate, host of Josh Pate’s College Football Show and contributing analyst at ESPN, joined by NBC Sports broadcaster John Fanta, was asked by FOS’s Ryan Glasspiegel about the CFP’s statement last month announcing it is officially considering expansion to 24 teams.

“Why would you stop at 24?” Pate said. “Why not go to 36? It’s the college basketball effect, but it’s just in college football.”

College Football’s Biggest Videoboard

The University of Illinois is raising the bar for game day with the largest video display in college football from Daktronics. Totaling more than 17,300 square feet, the new end-zone videoboard at Gies Memorial Stadium is the highlight of an installation that includes 16 LED displays combining for more than 26,750 square feet and 30 million pixels. The main display itself is nearly double the size of the next-largest screen in college sports. This season, Illinois debuted its larger-than-life technology to enhance the live event experience and create an immersive atmosphere for Illini fans.

👉Take a look at Illinois’s new videoboard.

STATUS REPORT

Two Up, Two Down

Netflix

Netflix ⬆ For the first time, Netflix will broadcast FIFA men’s World Cup matches after it secured the rights in Spain and Andorra to show the 2030 tournament. The streaming giant is already broadcasting the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cups to viewers in the U.S. and Canada. The 2030 men’s World Cup is being jointly hosted by Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, with three special matches at the beginning of the group stage taking place in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay to mark the tournament’s 100th anniversary.

Women’s flag football ⬆ The sport just got yet another major boost, this time from Michael Strahan. Bloomberg reported today that the former NFL star and Good Morning America host is cofounding a women’s flag tournament with $500,000 in prizes. Dubbed The Grand Slam of Flag, the event is set to debut in Los Angeles next February during Super Bowl week and will feature six women’s national teams, including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Creative Artists Agency, EverWonder Studio, and SMAC Entertainment are also involved in the effort.

College hockey ⬇ Reigning Division I men’s national champion and current No. 1 Denver takes on No. 2 Michigan on Saturday night. The massive rematch of the 2026 Frozen Four semifinal features seven players picked in the 2026 NHL draft—including two first-rounders in Daxon Rudolph (Sabres) and J.P. Hurlbert (Red Wings). It could be a preview of this year’s postseason action—except the game won’t be broadcast on network television.

Trump Administration ⬇ It said it may have cut down up to 430 trees around East Potomac Golf Links in Washington, D.C., this weekend against the instructions of a federal judge. D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered the administration to stop removing trees from the course Monday after she had previously warned it not to make irreversible changes without informing her. “What has happened has cost the government all of its credibility,” Reyes said.