Sunday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup Final between the United States and Japan gave ESPN its best ratings ever for a soccer match.
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The game, which Japan won on a penalty shootout after the match ended in a 2-2 tie, was watched by an average of 13.5 million viewers, based on a 7.4 U.S. household rating. That makes it the most-watched and highest-rated soccer telecast ever on any ESPN network.
The match far surpassed the U.S.-Algeria men’s game (June 23, 2010) from last summer’s FIFA World Cup, which set the previous ESPN records for both ratings and viewership (6.2 million, 4.0 rating).
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It also is the second most-watched daytime telecast in cable history, behind ESPN coverage of this year’s Rose Bowl (20.1 million).
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Additionally, the game was seen by 548,000 viewers on ESPN3.com.
Meanwhile, the final also set a new Twitter record for the most tweets per second about any one topic.
“New Tweets per second records! End of the #WWC final: 7196 TPS. And today’s end to the Paraguay/Brazil game is now 2nd with 7166 TPS,” Twitter announced Sunday.
