TNT, Club World Cup Ride Messi to Surprisingly Solid Debut Ratings

The first glimpse into American TV viewership for the revamped Club World Cup has arrived.

TNT Sports released its viewership numbers for most of the group stage of the tournament, which wrapped Thursday. London-based DAZN Sports paid FIFA $1 billion to stream the tournament globally, and TNT Sports sublicensed about a third of the matches in the U.S.

For matches through Wednesday, TNT Sports and its sister platforms averaged 360,000 viewers. Take away midweek afternoon games and that figure rises to 409,000 viewers.

The largest audience averaged 676,000 viewers for Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami against Brazilian Palmeiras on Monday. The broadcast peaked with 875,000 viewers. The next most-watched matches were between Bayern Munich and Boca Juniors (468,000 viewers), Real Madrid and CF Pachuca (391,000 viewers), and Paris Saint-Germain and Athlético Madrid (378,000 viewers). Inter Miami’s three group-stage matches were all among the top seven most-watched.

When FIFA controversially transformed its second-tier tournament into a 32-team juggernaut with a $1 billion purse, it was unclear how the soccer world would respond. TNT doesn’t offer a full picture, because games are free to stream on DAZN, and many U.S. soccer fans watch Spanish-language broadcasts. But TNT’s sliver of the Club World Cup media-rights pie shows steady interest from U.S. soccer fans. The 409,000 figure is not far behind the English Premier League, which has averaged more than 500,000 viewers in the U.S. in each of the past four seasons, including games on NBC.

A number of factors should boost U.S. viewership numbers even higher moving forward in the tournament. The knockout stage will feature fewer midweek afternoon matches—bad news for European audiences but good for viewership and attendance domestically. And many of the teams largely unknown to U.S. audiences have been eliminated, meaning more familiar teams and players who are big TV draws remain.

The biggest match to watch from an attendance and viewership standpoint will be Inter Miami vs. PSG on Sunday. Messi will face his former team fresh off a Champions League title. The match is taking place in a full-sized NFL stadium in Atlanta, which is the only domed venue in a tournament that has struggled with boiling temperatures across the U.S this week. TNT Sports will carry that match and Palmeiras against Brazilian Botafogo this weekend. But, the big match also means either Messi or PSG will be eliminated, a blow to tournament buzz either way.

Soccer fans in the U.S. are clearly tuned in to the international tournaments happening on their own soil this summer. The Concacaf Gold Cup, also held in the U.S. at the same time as the Club World Cup, averaged 1.2 million viewers on Fox for the U.S. men’s national team against Haiti on Sunday.