The news: FIFA World Cup viewership is surging, with Fox audiences up 116%, per Nielsen Big Data + Panel and Adobe Analytics data cited by Mediapost. That amounts to an average of 5.7 million viewers every minute on Fox platforms; viewership is more than double that of the 2022 World Cup. Preliminary figures for last Friday’s match between the United States and Australia alone topped a combined audience of 20.68 million, per NBC.

The World Cup is also giving Fox Corp’s ad business a notable boost: The company will see ad revenues rise 39% this quarter, per UBS media analyst John C. Hodulik, above the estimated 7% it would have grown without the World Cup.

Zooming out: The World Cup is a reminder that live sports remain one of the few places advertisers can still reliably reach large, engaged audiences.

• The World Cup was already one of the most watched sports globally, outperformed only by the Olympics, per FIFA, IOC, and Nielsen data. That makes it one of the most valuable live events for advertisers looking to reach mass audiences—especially those hoping to target a global audience.
• US brands can still tap into sizable domestic reach around the World Cup, which is taking place in North America: Nearly one-third of US adults planned to watch this year’s event, including 40% of Gen Zers, per Numerator.
• That mass reach, combined with the enduring appeal of live sports, helps explain why sports ad impressions continue to outperform other formats. Sports accounted for nearly 30% of total US converged TV ad-supported viewing in Q4 2025, per Nielsen, underscoring the category’s central role in drawing audiences.

Implications for marketers and the media industry: The battle for live sports rights is intensifying as media platforms chase the audiences that these events reliably deliver. With US sports rights spending anticipated to reach $32.8 billion this year, per S&P Global Market Intelligence, platforms are betting that live sports will remain one of the strongest tools for attracting and retaining viewers.

For marketers, events like the World Cup offer access to massive, passionate audiences at a scale few other formats can match—but that reach comes at a cost. Brands that can’t justify high-priced in-game spots can still tap into the momentum through adjacent opportunities, including second-screen campaigns or investments in less expensive but fast-growing areas like women’s sports.