Almost every bit of news that leaked about the World Cup was bad, or at least ominous. Ticket prices, due to FIFA’s artificial control over supply rather than depth of demand, are ridiculous. Hotels that expected record bookings are desperate for anyone to take a room. No one knows where Iran will train, or whether they will be able to play at all. ICE may appear in the parking lot. After more than 30 years of waiting for the United States to host the World Cup again and secure its place as a soccer power, sentiment has run completely raw.
But I bet all the heat cools down — or at least boils down — once the games themselves start. (Eleven cities will compete, plus three in Mexico and two in Canada, from June 11 to July 19.) This will be partly because of the matches themselves: the World Cup is an irresistible spectacle, and the matches are always so compelling, that once the ball is thrown, fans tend to focus on what is happening on the pitch and ignore anything happening off it. But I suspect the real reason the narrative is shifting is something more banal, institutional and American: it will be the destruction of TV ratings… and not entirely because of football itself.
The most-watched football game in American television history occurred 11 years ago. The final match of the Women’s World Cup between the United States and Japan was in July 2015, which the American team won 5-2, giving them their third title. (They won their fourth, and so far final, title four years later; Spain won in 2023.) This was an incredibly popular team, with Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach, and Megan Rapinoe, a team that would eventually become the first women’s team to get a ticker-tape parade through New York’s “Valley of Champions.” But that’s not the only reason the match received record ratings, or even a basic rating.
The reason was the start time of the game. Canada hosted the World Cup Final that year, and in North American time, the final began at 7 pm ET on a summer day. It’s basically the perfect time: people who had to work the next day were able to stay up and watch the whole thing – ratings were actually at an all-time high as the game ended, leading up to the awards ceremony – kids got to watch with their parents, and older people could get to the end before bed. There’s a reason the Super Bowl starts at 6:30 PM ET every year: time to allow for an experience we can all share, something people in Maine and Hawaii can enjoy, something you don’t necessarily have to plan all week. Anyone who stayed up to watch the Women’s World Cup Final didn’t have their workweek damaged because they stayed up all night on Sunday.
But this World Cup remains the most recent to be held in North America: the women played in France in 2019 and Australia and New Zealand in 2023, and the men played in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022 — all time zones that are highly imperfect for American TV ratings. The Qatar Championship in 2022 was even worse, because due to the heat in Qatar, the World Cup was moved to November-December, where it had to compete with American football. (The highest-rated match of 2022 was the final — which received roughly the same ratings as the 2015 Women’s World Cup final, mostly because it started at 10 a.m. ET and ended before soccer started.) Games in Russia started at 6 a.m. and ended at 3 p.m., and in Qatar they were at 5 a.m. and 2 p.m.
But this year’s World Cup will be held in North America. Therefore, match start times are designed for US television. If you’re in a major market like New York or Miami, that means 1pm, 4pm, 8pm, and sometimes 9pm starts for games on the West Coast, with the finals scheduled for 3pm ET on Sunday: designed for ratings success.
Thus, almost every story you’ll read about TV ratings — which, fairly or unfairly, is the global indicator of the success of an American sporting event — will be about how great they are compared to the ratings for the Cup in Russia or Qatar… and are likely the highest ever. (That 2015 record is very vulnerable.) Because we place such value on these rankings, then you would probably expect the World Cup’s bad-news narrative to immediately shift to a ratings-shattering World Cup as soon as the matches start. It won’t have anything to do with issues like Iran or ICE, or a drop in sky-high ticket prices (although that could happen too). We can laugh at that, and how ratings are the business goal of all of this — Fox is estimated to make between $300 million to $500 million in ad revenue — and how oppressive that can feel. But it’s always good to remember: TV ratings at the end of the day are just eyeballs – that is, people watching the game and potentially falling in love with this great game. For football and those who love it, this is definitely a win.
This story appeared in the June 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe.
