Univision nearly triples FIFA World Cup Audience.

With just 3 days and 8 games into the month-long, 64 game tournament, the Univision Television Network’s exclusive Spanish-language coverage of the FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 is breaking audience records in all key demographics and setting the pace to become the most-watched World Cup in U.S. history.

According to Nielsen’s NTI Fast National Ratings, the first 8 games have averaged 2.6 million Persons 2+ which is 1.7 million more than the average of the first 8 games of the 2002 World Cup tournament in Korea/Japan, or nearly 3 times the audience. Additionally, Adults 18-49 averaged 1.7 million viewers per game, also nearly tripling the audience. Even more dramatic growth was seen among Teens 12-17 and Kids 2-11 with nearly 5 times and more than 3 times the audience in these demographics respectively.

Highlighting the extraordinary devotion of Hispanic soccer fans in this country, Sunday’s match-up between Mexico and Iran, which resulted in a Mexican victory, also scored an impressive 5.4 million average audience of Persons 2+ making it the most-watched sporting event in Spanish-language television history, beating even previous World Cup final matches.
Univision, the official Spanish-language television network, will carry live coverage of 56 games, including the final championship match, and sister network TeleFutura will broadcast 8 live games. All games will be rebroadcast during primetime on either TeleFutura or the Galavision cable network.