NEW YORK (AP) – An estimated 21.6 million people watched Belgium knock out the United States soccer team in the World Cup on U.S. television – an impressive total for a weekday afternoon that almost certainly undercounts how many people actually saw it.
The Nielsen company said Wednesday that 16.5 million people watched the game on ESPN, with 5.1 million more seeing it on the Spanish-language Univision network. In addition, nearly 1.7 million people watched an online stream of the event, Nielsen said.
The record U.S. television audience for soccer is the 24.7 million who saw the United States play Portugal on June 24, which tied the 2010 World Cup between Spain and the Netherlands.
The Portugal game took place on a weekend, however, when there were more people with free time available to watch. The U.S.-Belgium game started at 4 p.m. on the East Coast, earlier in other time zones, during a working day.
Nielsen does not measure viewership in bars, offices or other public places. In 2010, ESPN estimated that the stated audience size for weekday World Cup games would increase by 23 percent if public viewing were taken into account.