The United States’ surprising thumping of Japan in the 2015 Women’s World Cup final was witnessed by a whole lot of eyeballs.
The overnight TV rating of 15.2 was a single point away from doubling the 2011 final loss to Japan (8.8), and easily moved past the famous 1999 final win over China (13.3).
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Two Midwest markets, Kansas City and St. Louis, posted shares above 20, while Fox says that the tournament’s closing moments peaked with an 18.2 rating.
What does that all mean? We’ll leave it to SportsTVratings.com:
Overnight household rating = the live+same day DVR overnight metered-market household rating from the top 56 Nielsen television markets. The 56 markets (out of 210 total) account for about 70% of the US TV-viewing population. The overnight household rating is the percentage of the households that were tuned-in in those markets
To sum it up: a heck of a lot of people watched soccer last night.