KVEA-TV & Telemundo Official Broadcasters Of Mexican National Soccer Team.
March 23, 2001
KVEA-TV/52 and Telemundo Network are the official Spanish-language broadcasters of the Mexican National Soccer Team. The matches are port of the qualifying rounds to the 2001 World Cup, being played in Japan.
KVEA has aired four Mexican National soccer matches live since September. With each game, the ratings improve:
September 8th vs. Panama — 17.2 household rating
October 10th vs. Trinidad — 20.9 household rating
February 28th vs. USA — 22.9 household rating
March 7th vs. Brazil — 24.9 household rating
Three of those matches are “friendly” matches, meaning they have no bearing on the qualifying rounds. The USA match was the team’s first qualifier, where Mexico lost to the USA by a score of 2-0. Because of that loss, each of the remaining qualifiers are all that more important to the team for World Cup consideration.
Three of those four matches also rank among KVEA’s highest rated programs ever since NHSI began in late 1992. The Brazil game is KVEA’S highest rated, and the USA game is KVEA’s 4th highest rated program ever!
Latinos, (and Mexicans specifically) account for such a large portion of the LA television market population that Mexican National soccer is LA’s biggest sports property. The February 28th match of Mexico vs. USA was the highest rated sports program among Persons and Men 18-34 and Men 18-49 in the NSI (general market) service, beating all other local and network telecasts of basketball, hockey, football, golf and NASCAR racing.
The last qualifier game for the Mexican National Team was Mexico vs. Chile, Wednesday 4/11, 11:30p-1:30am (PT.) Telemundo will also air the next World Cup Qualifying Game USA vs. Costa Rica on Wednesday 4/25, 11:30p-1:30am (PT.)
Andres Cantor, who has covered five World Cups, provides play by play for all of Telemundo’s Mexican National Soccer matches.
Telemundo began airing Major League Soccer beginning Saturday 4/21, 1-3pm (PT.)
