US-Mexico grabs great TV ratings

Last Wednesday's US-Mexico match saw the highest ever non-World Cup oriented ratings for the US team. Over the whole match, ESPN2 earned a .7 household rating, or 800,000 viewers. However, during the final 15-minutes, the game averaged a 1.0 household rating or 1.1 million viewers.

To put that in perspective, the number one cable program last week was WWE Raw with a 3.6 rating while American Idol often gets an 18 rating. Also, ESPN's Monday Night football averaged about a 12-13 household rating for 2006.

The numbers against those three forms of entertainment might not look so hot, but when you look at normal soccer ratings of .3, it is a marked improvement. Also, all three of them represent top rated shows.

A little added bonus to the numbers, since they were higher at the end, it means people who were just flicking by stopped to watch. It's a good thing the final 15-minutes saw some of the best play of the night.

Over on Univision the match also set records with more then 6 million total viewers, making it the second most-watched Spanish-language sports cast in history.

Here is the information on the great Univision numbers:

It beat the Super Bowl among Hispanic Adults 18-49, Men 18-49 and Total Viewers.

For the entire night, Univision was the second largest broadcast network among all Teens 12-17 with 573,000 viewers (beating ABC, CBS, NBC, CW), the third largest broadcast network among all Adults 18-34 with 2,074,000 viewers (beating CBS, NBC, CW), the fourth largest broadcast network among all Adults 18-49 with 3,617,000 viewers (beating NBC, CW) and the fifth largest broadcast network among all Persons 2+ with 5,931,000 viewers (beating CW).

In Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, nearly 1.2 million viewers watched KMEX-TV’s broadcast of the USA's shutout win to make it the highest-rated program of the night beating out “American Idol,” “Lost” and “CSI: NY.” Additionally, the U.S. victory was the No. 1 ranked program in its time period among Men 18-49 in San Francisco and Dallas, and No. 2 in New York and Chicago (again, against competition like "American Idol," "Lost" and "CSI: NY").

Soccer still has a long way to go before it becomes a ratings powerhouse, but events like this show, that with good promotion and quality play, people will watch.