More than 6.4 million viewers tuned into ESPN’s July 11 coverage of the Italy-England UEFA Euro 2020 Finals soccer match, according to Nielsen.

The match, in which Italy defeated England on penalty kicks to win the tournament, was the most watched UEFA Euro event in U.S. history and the most watched soccer telecast since the Women’s World Cup championship match in July 2019. The audience was 46% higher than the 4.5 million generated by the 2016 finals between Portugal and France, said Nielsen.

Also Read: Live Sports Programming Sizzling on the Summer Ratings Front

Overall, ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 1.3 million viewers across 51 matches of the UEFA Euro 2020, a 31% increase over the 2016 event on ESPN and ESPN2, said Nielsen.

Univision, meanwhile, said the average 2.9 million viewers (2+) and 1.4 million adults in the 18-49 age bracket made up the biggest ever Spanish-language audience for a Euro match in the United States. Over 11 matches, the Euros on Univision averaged 1.2 million total viewers and 523,000 adults ages 18-49, Univision said.  

Fox Sports has scored some big audience numbers for its Women's World Cup tournament coverage heading into Sunday's USA-The Netherlands finals match.

Fox Sports is averaging 1.4 million viewers across Fox broadcast, FS1 and FS2 through the semifinals of its 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup coverage from France, up 6% through semifinal coverage of the 2015 tournament across Fox networks, according to Nielsen. 

The numbers include a whopping 7.0 million viewers who tuned into Tuesday's USA-England semifinal match. Overall, the game -- won by the USA 2-1 to catapult the team into the finals -- drew 7.3 million viewers across Fox and streaming services, according to Fox Sports officials. 

Wednesday's Netherlands -Sweden game delivered 2.3 million viewers on FS1, making it the most watched, non-US Women's World Cup semifinal on record, according to Fox Sports. 

Sunday's USA-Netherlands contest starts at 11 a.m. and can be viewed on Fox broadcasting network and Spanish-language network Telemundo. 

The USA women’s soccer team will continue its run toward the Women’s World Cup finals today (July 2) with an afternoon semi-final match against England.

The game, which begins at 3 PM (ET), will be carried live on Fox broadcasting and on Spanish-language broadcast network Telemundo. The game will also be live streamed on Fox Sports Go and the Telemundo Deportes app.

Team USA’s last game -- a 2-1 victory against France on June 28 -- averaged 6.1 million viewers on Fox, making it the most watched Women’s World Cup quarterfinal match on record and the most watched, English-language television soccer match since last year’s men’s World Cup final, according to Fox Sports.

Overall through quarterfinals, Fox Sports is averaging  1.2 million viewers, up 10 % vs. 2015 Women's World Cup (1.1 million) and 51% vs. 2011 (804,000), according to Nielsen Media Research.

On Spanish-language network Telemundo, The Women’s World Cup quarterfinals averaged a Total Audience Delivery of 331,000 viewers across Telemundo’s platforms – a 41% increase over the 2015 Women’s World Cup quarterfinals (235,000 average viewers). Also, the USA-France match was the second most live streamed Women’s World Cup match in the history of the network, said Telemundo officials.

A USA victory today would propel the team to the July 7 finals match against the winner of tomorrow’s match between Sweden and the Netherlands, which will air live on FS1 at 3 PM. 

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)