Mexico's July 5 loss to England ranks as most-watched Spanish-language U.S. telecast of all time
Telemundo’s World Cup coverage over the past four weeks has set numerous viewership records for NBCUniversal’s Spanish-language network. But two days in particular stand out to Miguel Lorenzo, senior VP of sports content and production for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises.
The July 5 match that saw Mexico knocked out of the tournament by England ranks as the most-watched telecast of all time, bar none, for Spanish-language TV in the U.S., per Lorenzo and NBCUniversal research. The game drew 23.2 million viewers over the Independence Day holiday weekend.
The June 30 match that saw Mexico advance after defeating Ecuador also brought in a blockbuster audience of 18.9 million viewers. The July 6 U.S. Men’s National Team loss to Belgium commanded 7 million viewers.
Today’s England-Norway game, which begins at 5 p.m. ET, is also expected to deliver huge crowds for Fox Sports, the English-language U.S. home of the tournament, and Telemundo and Peacock.
The other record that is a major milestone for Telemundo is the amount of advertising and sponsorship that the World Cup audience windfall has delivered for Telemundo, Peacock and Telemundo’s sibling cable channel Universo.
“This tournament has created the largest Spanish-language media deals in history,” Lorenzo told Variety. “When you look at the scale of these audiences, it’s not really surprising because every single day there’s a new record viewership record being broken, and certainly from a sales perspective, the team has done an amazing job to leverage this tournament for the business.”
Planning for the World Cup in North America began days after the 2022 World Cup tournament wrapped in Qatar. Well over 1,000 employees across NBCUniversal have worked to deliver live coverage of 104 World Cup matches across 11 U.S. cities, Canada and Mexico, culminating with the final match at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on July 19. This year’s World Cup tournament is the biggest ever by definition, as FIFA expanded the competitive heat this time around to 48 teams, requiring a 104-game schedule. All 104 games will air live on Peacock. Telemundo will carry 92 games live on its linear network, while cabler Universo has 12 matches.
“To pull off this kind of event at the scale and with the massive production and programming and marketing and promotional plans that we created for this event, it really does require the contribution of everyone in NBCUniversal,” Lorenzo said. “We’re really well positioned to put together such expansive World Cup coverage because we are part of NBCUniversal.”
Telemundo, Peacock and Universo are carrying some 700 hours of game and related content across the 39-day tournament. The teams have also worked to customize coverage of the expansive event for linear, streaming, digital and social platforms.
“On every single platform, we wanted to make sure that we had World Cup coverage that was also authentic and native to each platform,” Lorenzo said. “On social, we have a daily live watch party for the most important match of the day. That type of experience makes sense on social. It doesn’t really make sense on linear.”
“We’ve leveraged influencers on the Hispanic side that have a heavy soccer following to be part of those watch parties. Those influencers also create content that is made specifically for social because we know that audience is a little different from linear, maybe a little different from streaming,” Lorenzo said. “All of it [is presented] with the same goal, which is to engage audiences to consume World Cup content and ultimately to watch the World Cup either on Peacock or Telemundo.”
Through the first 25 days, Telemundo’s coverage has generated more than 1.4 billion social video views, and some 43.3 million social interactions across top platforms. Between the linear Telemundo network and the streaming Peacock platform, World Cup games through 27 days have averaged 5.7 million viewers per game. Lorenzo has been watching the social media reaction to the World Cup event carefully. He’s been pleasantly surprised at how viewers have reacted to Telemundo’s presentation of the tournament and its shoulder programming about the sport of soccer and the key players, teams and rivalries that have defined World Cup stakes in recent decades. Lorenzo was particularly happy to see Trevor Noah call out the quality of Telemundo’s coverage on his YouTube “World Cup Watch Party” streaming show.
“One of the things that has caught our attention is just the volume of positive social sentiment on Telemundo’s coverage. What is surprising is the level of specificity in people’s comments because it isn’t just, ‘Hey, I love watching soccer in Spanish.’ Great. It’s been really surprising to see people call out very specific things that we planned for in our strategy, whether it’s the hydration breaks and not going to commercial and staying on the feed once the clock starts, so that everybody can catch every single moment,” he said. “We’ve even had people comment on our graphics package and how great it looks.”
Like Fox Sports, which is reaping NFL-level audiences for its World Cup coverage, the matches command a demographically diverse and multi-generational audience. Top marketers will pay a premium to reach multiple generations of a family watching a big event together. And that defines the culture of sports fandom for many Hispanic families, Lorenzo said.
“Hispanics watch and prioritize live sports. They prioritize live events, and they do so communally as a family,” Lorenzo said.
As the World Cup winds down to the semifinals and finals, Telemundo is stepping up its live production effort to elevate the presentation of the decisive last matches.
“As we get to these final rounds, we’re really taking our production on the road,” Lorenzo said. “The stakes are higher, the interest is higher as you get to these final rounds and the elimination aspect of this. There’s some celebrities that we’re still going to be tapping into for the final on some of these matches. We’ve already worked with a lot of celebrities leading up during this World Cup, both on some things that we’ve planned for, and then stuff that has also happened organically.”
Plotting and executing the World Cup coverage has been an important learning experience for Telemundo and Peacock as they collaborate in the effort to deliver an strong multiplatform viewing experience for fans.
“There’s been a lot of work that we’ve done in collaboration with Peacock to take the World Cup experience on Peacock to another level. We implemented a Spanish [user interface] on Peacock right before the World Cup. There’s a lot of new features that the Peacock team has rolled out ahead of this World Cup, whether it’s multiview experiences, whether it’s alternate camera angles for specific matches, vertical video. But it’s not just the matches. It’s really the experience. It’s making things very easy to search and navigable within Peacock. And then marketing efforts behind it all.”
Lorenzo also gave a hat-tip to Telemundo’s 125 local affiliate stations, which encompass 31 NBCUniversal-owned and 94 independently owned outlets.
“Telemundo has the largest local footprint in Spanish in the country, and our local stations play an important role at the local level creating awareness and creating coverage,” Lorenzo said. “That’s part of the way that we’re able to be at all 104 games in all these cities and cover the World Cup as extensively as we have.”
The World Cup’s final week is expected to pack a punch as the global field of contenders is winnowed to two. For Telemundo and NBCUniversal, the tournament has been a great opportunity to test the boundaries of innovative broadcasting, digital and social media options and enhancements.
“When you look at the record viewership that we’re seeing for this World Cup and the consumption across different platforms, it speaks to how fans are truly embracing this World Cup and soccer in general in this country in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Lorenzos said. “I also think Telemundo’s coverage of this World Cup helped to take the coverage of World Cup to another level across all these platforms.”
(Pictured: Mexico striker Raul Jimenez at the July 5 England-Mexico game in Mexico City)