Tuesday, February 5, 2008

THE COUNTRY IS WATCHING

All the hype building around the game got us thinking back to last year's sold-out event in Glendale, Ariz., and how every year the attention seems to get bigger and bigger.

Exhibit #1: TV Ratings

Here's the headlines from Feb.9, 2007, on ussoccer.com:

Televised soccer hit new rating highs on Wednesday night for the broadcast of the U.S. National Team's 2-0 victory against Mexico on ESPN2 and Univision from University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. For U.S. Soccer, the victory on the field continued the team's dominance of Mexico, but also highlighted the incredible gains the sport is making elsewhere.

ESPN2's broadcast was the most-watched U.S. game in the team's history, outside of the World Cup and World Cup qualifiers. The network earned a 0.7 household rating, which translates to 1.1 million viewers and comes on the heels of the network’s impressive 2006 World Cup ratings. Even more impressively, the game averaged a 1.0 rating during the final 15 minutes as the USA iced the victory.

On Univision, the match also set records with more than 6 million total viewers. The U.S. victory was the No. 2 most-watched Spanish-language sports cast in history, beating every Super Bowl among Hispanic Adults 18-49, Men 18-49 and Total Viewers.

For the accouting types, there's plenty more numbers to analyze.

3 comments:

Jules said...

Did they analyze how difficult it would be to find a bar to show the game when the UNC/Duke game is airing at exactly the same time? Yeah, we aren't having an easy time in BOSTON of all places, college basketball is a bigger ticket game here.

donovanhater said...

"The country is watching"...That statement was full of sarcasm. Right? Americans do not care a bit about the US national team. That's probably why Donovan hates Mexico so much. He is envious that futbol is a religion over there.

Historicus said...

I'll bet those 6 million Mexican fans were disappointed. Hopefully, there will be some more disappointed Mexican fans tonight around 10:30CT.