Viewership for previous World Cup finals was only a little higher than for a strong Monday Night Football game, but with matches on U.S. soil, media executives are hopeful this will be the year soccer breaks through.

Considering the Super Bowl is just one day and that the World Cup spans longer than a month, the viewership data favors the latter. In the 2026 tournament, the viewership is predicted to surpass 5 billion people across the world, making that an average of 128.2 million per day across 39 days.

FIFA's major expansion of the World Cup has not drawn universal praise, but it is a significant boost for Fox Corp. and NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo.

The good news for U.S. brands is that U.S. World Cup viewers lead all nations when it comes to daily media consumption - averaging 5.8 hours of TV and online video, 3.5 hours of audio, and 2.8 hours of gaming.

Comcast and Fox ramp up streaming and broadcast coverage as FIFA's expanded tournament returns to North America.

Major League Soccer has averaged 7.9 million live match viewers per week across streaming and linear platforms through the first three months of the 2026 season, an increase of 62% year-over-year.

From television economics to sports betting and Gen Z fandom, here's why soccer never fully broke through in America, and why 2026 could be different.