As Euro 2025 comes to a close, all signs point to the tournament finally enjoying its breakout moment in the United States. It culminates on Sunday in a 2023 World Cup final rematch between England and Spain — an ideal clash for attracting an American audience.
While the international break still has a few more days to go, there’s enough data to assess what’s worked, what hasn’t and where the growth of women’s soccer in America goes from here.
There’s never been any doubt that this country watches the U.S. Women’s national team. The 2015 Women’s World Cup win over Japan remains one of the most-watched soccer games in the country (26.7 million average viewers), only barely edged out by the 2022 men’s World Cup final between Argentina and France (26.73 million). There’s a massive difference, however, between casual and new fans tuning in for the USWNT during a World Cup and pulling in viewers for the Euros, or the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations or Copa America Femenina, even with the presence of NWSL players at all three tournaments.
Ahead of this summer of soccer, I wrote in the “Full Time” newsletter that these overlapping events — more so than a singular Women’s World Cup — would reveal the true growth of women’s soccer. The Euros, of the three options, was the most instructive test of how hungry an American audience would be for non-USWNT soccer, largely because of how Fox Sports approached its broadcast presentation.
Despite little promotion ahead of the tournament, Fox Sports bet big by putting most games on either the primary Fox channel or FS1, with only one match relegated to FS2. This towers over the approach from ESPN in 2022, which split the tournament between broadcast and streaming (two matches on ESPN, including the final, 21 on ESPN2 and eight on ESPN+). And is also a different world compared to the 2017 edition in the Netherlands, which entirely utilized ESPN3 and their app.
Fox, which said that they would air over 130 hours of live women’s soccer coverage this summer between the Euros and Copa America Femenina, has supplemented their Euros coverage with a studio show featuring analysts and former players, including Carli Lloyd, Ari Hingst, Jen Beattie and others. (Copa América, compared to the Euros, has gotten a more basic approach, with the games largely split between FS1 and FS2. The dichotomy in coverage between the two tournaments is notable.)
Ahead of the Euros, Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill told Sports Business Journal that the network was targeting 50 percent growth for viewership. They’ve easily surpassed that number, averaging over 90 percent through the group stage with a 2025 average viewership of 306,000 compared to 2022’s 161,000 viewers.
France’s 2-1 win over England provided the largest spike of the group stage, with 690,000 viewers, thanks to its placement on Fox and a favorable Saturday afternoon timeslot.