Fox Sports’ maiden run on the World Cup coverage field didn’t match up ratings-wise to the prior World Cup tournament, but it still drew decent audiences for Fox and FS1 over its month-long run.

Fox Sports’ coverage of Sunday’s France-Croatia World Cup final averaged 11.3 million viewers across Fox broadcasting and streaming services, and 11.8 million with digital viewing added -- the most watched game of the tournament. 

Unfortunately for Fox, the numbers were well below the 17.3 million numbers ABC generated from the 2014 Germany-Argentina World Cup final, according to Nielsen.

The good news for Fox is that France’s 4-2 win over Croatia was the most watched, non-NFL telecast on the network so far this year.

Overall, Fox Sports’ coverage of the World Cup drew an average of 2.7 million viewers, down 20 percent from ESPN’s coverage of the 2014 World Cup from Brazil but up 9% from the 2010 World Cup from South Africa (all excluding Team USA matches), according to Fox. 

Fox executives acknowledged early that they had tempered ratings expectations, given the absence of the US Team in the tournament as well as the time difference between Russia and the US. Yet several games – particularly during the knockout rounds – delivered strong ratings for Fox Sports.

RELATED: Fox Sports Hoping For World Cup Ratings Rebound 

Fox Sports also reported that Fox broadcasting and FS1’s coverage – which aired primarily in the morning and early afternoon time slots in the U.S. -- accounted for all 20 of the top-20 shows among Men 18-49 in English-language TV over the last month, and delivered the 15 most-watched soccer matches since the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, according to the network. 

Croatia’s dramatic 2-1 win over England in Wednesday’s World Cup semifinal game averaged 5.5 million viewers on Fox broadcasting, the network said Thursday.

The game was off less that 1% of the audience drawn by the 2014 Netherlands-Argentina match, which drew 5.51 million viewers on ESPN, and was up 61% over the Spain-Germany match in 2010, according to network officials.

Online, the game was the most streamed World Cup semi-final match in history, with the average minute audience finishing at 830,000 for the live match.

The England-Croatia game also bested the 4.4 million viewers that tuned into Tuesday’s France-Belgium contest on Fox.

Fox on Sunday will broadcast the France-Croatia World Cup final, as well as the England-Belgium consolation game on Saturday.  

Live-streaming video service YouTube TV suffered a service disruption this afternoon causing its viewers to miss portions of Fox broadcasting’s live telecast of the England-Croatia World Cup semifinals match, but restored service before the end of the contest.

YouTube TV’s live streaming signal went down during the second half of the England-Croatia game. The service posted a tweet around 3 pm (ET), calling the timing of the streaming issues “horrible.”

[embed]https://twitter.com/YouTubeTV/status/1017121393857556485[/embed]

Within an hour, YouTube TV sent out a second tweet stating that the service was restored. YouTube TV subscribers were able to watch Croatia defeat England to advance to the World Cup final Sunday against France.  

[embed]https://twitter.com/YouTubeTV/status/1017136092041043978[/embed]

While people were tweeting about the outage, sports-centric virtual MVPD FuboTV got into the act, replying to one Twitter user looking for an alternative to "Come to @fuboTV, we have cookies.. and all games in Full HD." 

YouTube TV subscribers pay $40 a month for a lineup of more than 60 channels, including national sports services ESPN, FS1, MLB Network and NBA TV, as well as most regional sports services. As of Thursday the service had not publicly offered an explanation for the glitch.

Fox Sports is hoping to ride some serious ratings momentum coming out of this past weekend’s World Cup quarterfinal matches into the international soccer tournament’s version of the Final Four set to begin today.

After struggling from a ratings perspective in the early rounds without the USA team, Fox Sports has scored some big ratings numbers in the later rounds. This past Saturday the network drew a whopping 6.3 million viewers for the Croatia-Russia match quarterfinal match (6.6 million including streaming viewers), making it the most watched World Cup quarterfinal in English or Spanish language since at least 1990, according to Fox.

England’s defeat of Sweden, also on Saturday, drew 5 million viewers across the network and digital streaming platforms, according to Fox.

“The first week of the tournament, which is when we were most impacted by the time difference between Russia and the U.S., was challenging, but since then we have exceeded our own expectations,” said Fox Sports executive vice president of research and content strategy Michael Mulvihill. “The overall audience figures have been strong, we’re seeing strong contributions from both streaming and out-of-home television, and the World Cup is delivering the most affluent audience in sports to our advertisers."

While the numbers are still down from the previous World Cup telecast – Fox and FS1’s 2.5 million viewers through the World Cup Russia quarterfinals is down 18% from the 2014 Brazil World Cup tournament, excluding team USA matches -- Fox Sports has drawn large pockets of viewers for several big games throughout the tournament, according to network executives.

Even with the elimination of marquee team draws like Germany, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, Mulvihill said Fox is bullish about its ratings prospects heading into the final rounds of a very unpredictable, action-packed and suspenseful World Cup tournament. France and Belgium square off today, with Croatia and England battling tomorrow. The winners will play Sunday in the World Cup final.

“I think it’s been a bit surprising that the World Cup has not been very reliant on recognizable stars or traditional powers,” said Mulvihill. “In the end it hasn’t mattered much that Germany failed to get out of the group, or that both Messi and Ronaldo lost in the round of 16. The two most-watched games have been Croatia-Russia and Croatia-Denmark; who would have predicted that? I think we’re finding that stars don’t make the World Cup, the World Cup makes stars.”

Telemundo has also pulled in some record-setting numbers for its Spanish-language coverage of the World Cup. Through 60 matches, Telemundo Deportes’ 2018 World Cup presentation has reached 34.7 million TV viewers. Overall, Telemundo has reached nearly 55% of the U.S. Hispanic population.

Telemundo’s TV coverage has also set records for the network’s most-watched daytime windows 67% of the time on their respective days of the week (14 of 21 match days), according to the network.

Pictured, top: Luka Modric of Croatia and Daler Kuziaev of Russia compete for the ball during the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia Quarter Final match between Russia and Croatia at Fisht Stadium on July 7, 2018 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)