Mexico v England pulled huge numbers in the US

the thing is people always talk about ratings like they just happen by magic but this was a massive fixture with proper crossover appeal and the us audience was always going to be there if the timing was right and the teams were right and the coverage wasnt completely useless which with fox is obviously asking a lot
 
A lot of this comes down to how the game was framed. If you have Mexico versus England and then USA versus Belgium afterwards, you have a full day of football with narrative and stakes and that is exactly how you build a big audience, but the broadcast still matters because it shapes how long people stay with it and whether they feel like they are part of something major or just watching a badly packaged product
 
I was in the pub for this and you could feel the room change whenever the game got tense because even the people who only half watch football were suddenly leaning in and shouting at the screen and checking the time and asking who was who and that is what a proper international fixture does, it turns everyone into a fan for two hours. There was one bloke at the bar who normally only cares about horse racing and he was losing his mind over every attack like it was the cup final, and that is why these numbers do not surprise me at all because the match had that sort of gravity. Fox can keep the pundits and the weird presentation and whatever else, but the sport itself did the heavy lifting here and everyone in that pub knew it
 
People saying Fox caused the audience are chatting absolute nonsense because nobody was sitting there for the studio lads they were there for Mexico and England and the whole occasion and if anything Fox just got lucky being the platform on the night
 
The officials were doing my head in all game because every time the tempo started to build it felt like they found a way to stop it with some tiny call or delay or bit of nonsense and that is what kills the flow for me more than anything, not the teams, not the broadcast, but the refs constantly inserting themselves into a match that was already big enough on its own. You have a huge occasion, the crowd is up, the tension is there, everybody is locked in, and then suddenly it becomes about a whistle or a stoppage or some random decision that leaves both sets of fans raging, and I swear it always happens in the matches people actually care about. If you want viewers to stick around and feel like they are part of something special then let the game breathe instead of turning it into a referee show because that is exactly how you ruin momentum and make a huge night feel like a slog
 
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