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It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
It was all fixed for the United States Women’s National Team to be playing a Women’s World Cup quarter-final in a prime time slot for TV viewers back home.
Instead, it is Spain and the Netherlands facing each other for a spot in the semi-finals — at the bizarre time of 11am (AEST) in Wellington.
The fixture is perhaps the most striking symbol of America’s miserable campaign because of what a ratings disaster it will be for national broadcast rights holder Fox Sports USA.
All the broadcaster’s best laid plans were blown up when the American team struggled through to the knock-out stages as the runner-up in Group E.
Almost everybody — particularly in America — had planned for the USWNT to finish top of the pool — a result that would have put them in the US TV-friendly time slot of a 12pm (AEST) game in Sydney for their second round match.
Instead they were famously bundled out at the hands of Sweden in one of the most dramatic penalty shootouts in recent memory. It was a fixture that most of America failed to tune in for, played at 5am New York time.
American also played two of its three group stage matches from 11am (AEST) in New Zealand — the only team to play two early fixtures during the group stage.
The pattern emerging is that there was a clear path for the United States to play almost all of their matches early in the day time in Australia and New Zealand – to accommodate TV audiences back home.
The scheduling also looked after Fox Sports, who paid a staggering $425 million for the rights to host a swath of FIFA tournaments, including the 2026 Men’s World Cup — which will be hosted in the USA, Canada and Mexico — and the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
It was all going so well. With the friendly 11am (AEST) group stage time slots — a 6pm kick-off for viewers in Los Angeles — the tournament was a smash ratings winner for the sports network.
Even the uber-unfriendly time slot for the team’s final group stage match against Portugal attracted 1.3 million viewers — making it the most watched overnight telecast in Fox Sports history.
Even with that match played at 3am, the American team’s group stage matches had average ratings of 4,345,000 viewers on Fox, making it the most-watched Women’s World Cup group stage ever on U.S. English language television.
2.52 million people watched the USA get knocked out by Sweden with a peak audience of more than four million viewers, according to Fox Sports.
Even that number was down by 21 per cent on the team’s Round of 16 match four years ago — because of the poor time slot, according to Front Office Sports.
Reporter Michael McCarthy wrote succinctly: “What makes matters worse is that if the favoured USWNT had won their Group Stage as expected, their games would have aired in ratings-friendly prime-time windows in the U.S. Instead, Team USA went out early with a whimper.
“All Fox can do is dream about what might have been if the favoured USWNT had pulled off a historic three-peat.”
It also doesn’t help that the team has been mercilessly attacked by football and social commentators back home. There was in fact celebrations in some pockets of the USA when Megan Rapinoe’s career ended with the misery of a missed penalty.
Photos of seeing Spain and Netherlands fans at Sky Stadium on Friday morning (AEST) will be a slap in the face for America and Fox Sports — especially after the network’s chief executive Eric Shanks last month spoke about how ad sales were up a whopping 50 per cent from the 2019 tournament.
He also came out and said what everyone was thinking about the American team’s scheduling.
“I think that’s a big reason why FIFA realised that it’s probably better for the US national team to be based in New Zealand,” Shanks said.
“One of the reasons probably is that time zone’s much more friendly to the U.S.
“So we’ll have the early games while they’re in New Zealand starting at like 9pm Eastern.
“And then it kinda gets a little bit all over the place; they’re either gonna be primetime games or fairly earlier in the morning.”
It makes it particularly painful for the viewers back home that Fox Sports’ now-infamous “cocky” pre-tournament ad has resurfaced.
The 2027 Women’s World Cup rights could be anything after the hot and cold results from the USWNT. Fifa also failed quite spectacularly in its declaration of reaching global TV rights figures worth $USD300 million and instead had to settle for an amount reported to have been worth around $200 million.
It’s a very different story in Australia, obviously.
The Matildas’ run through to the quarter-finals has smashed all ratings records. More than 3.5 million watched the Aussies defeat Denmark in the Round of 16.
