Over the past four weeks, Telemundo’s World Cup coverage has set numerous viewership records on NBCUniversal’s Spanish-language network. But for Miguel Lorenzo, senior vice president of sports content and production for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, these two days stand out in particular.
The July 5 game, in which Mexico was eliminated from the tournament by England, ranks as the most-watched television broadcast of all time, excluding Spanish-language television in the United States, according to research by Lorenzo and NBCUniversal. The game drew 23.2 million viewers over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
The June 30th game, in which Mexico defeated Ecuador to advance, was also a huge hit with 18.9 million viewers. The U.S. men’s national team’s game against Belgium on July 6 drew 7 million viewers.
Today’s match between England and Norway, which begins at 5pm ET, is also expected to draw large crowds on American English-language home channels Fox Sports, Telemundo and Peacock.
Another milestone for Telemundo is the amount of advertising and sponsorship that World Cup viewers turned into a windfall for Telemundo, Peacock, and Universo, Telemundo’s sibling cable channel.
“This tournament produced the largest Spanish-language media deal in history,” Lorenzo told Variety. “When you look at the scale of this viewership, it’s not all that surprising. New viewership records are being broken every day. And certainly, from a sales standpoint, the team has done a great job of leveraging this tournament for business.”
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Planning for the World Cup in North America began days after the 2022 World Cup tournament in Qatar. Well over 1,000 employees at NBCUniversal delivered live coverage of 104 World Cup matches in 11 cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, culminating in the final match at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19th. This year’s World Cup tournament is by definition the largest in history, as FIFA expanded the participation to 48 teams this time around, requiring a 104-game schedule. All 104 games will be broadcast live on Peacock. Telemundo will broadcast 92 games live on its linear network, while cable TV station Universo will host 12 games.
“We really need the contributions of everyone at NBCUniversal to pull this type of event off at scale and to execute on the extensive production, programming, marketing and promotional plans we’ve created for this event,” Lorenzo said. “Because we are part of NBCUniversal, we are extremely well-positioned to put together such extensive World Cup coverage.”
Telemundo, Peacock and Universo will deliver approximately 700 hours of games and related content throughout the 39-day tournament. The team has also worked to customize coverage of this massive event for linear, streaming, digital and social platforms.
“We wanted to ensure that all platforms offer authentic World Cup coverage that is unique to each platform,” Lorenzo said. “On social, we host daily live watch parties for the most important games of the day. That kind of experience makes sense on social, but not so much on linear.”
To build excitement on Telemundo’s social platforms, we needed to engage influencers to spread the word and advance our larger goal of attracting Peacock subscribers and Telemundo live viewers.
“We’ve been leveraging influencers on the Hispanic side who are big soccer fans to get into these watch parties. Those influencers also create content specifically for social because we know the audience is a little different than linear and probably a little different than streaming,” Lorenzo said. “All of that is (presented) with the same goal, which is to get viewers to consume World Cup content and ultimately watch the World Cup on Peacock or Telemundo.”
In the first 25 days, Telemundo’s coverage generated more than 1.4 billion social video views and approximately 43.3 million social interactions across top platforms. Between the linear Telemundo network and the streaming Peacock platform, World Cup matches averaged 5.7 million viewers per match through 27 days. Lorenzo is closely monitoring social media reactions to World Cup events. He’s been pleasantly surprised by the viewer response to Telemundo’s presentation of the tournament and the show’s coverage of the key players, teams and rivalries that have defined the sport of soccer and World Cup betting in recent decades. Lorenzo was especially pleased to see Trevor Noah praise the quality of Telemundo’s coverage on his YouTube “World Cup Watch Party” streaming show.
“One of the things we noticed was the amount of positive social sentiment in Telemundo’s coverage. What’s surprising is the level of specificity of people’s comments, because it’s not just, ‘I love watching soccer in Spanish.'” Great. “It’s really amazing to see people request very specific things that we had planned in our strategy, like taking hydration breaks, not going to commercials, continuing the feed when the clock starts, making sure everyone can capture every moment,” he said. “Some of our customers have commented on how great our graphics packages look.”
Mexico international striker Raul Jimenez during England vs. Mexico in Mexico City on July 5 (Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
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Similar to Fox Sports, which enjoys NFL-level viewership for its World Cup coverage, the games are demographically diverse and attract a multigenerational audience. Top marketers pay top dollar to reach multigenerational families watching big events together. And that defines sports fan culture for many Hispanic families, Lorenzo said.
“Hispanics watch and prioritize live sports. They prioritize live events and do it collectively as a family,” Lorenzo said.
As the World Cup approaches its semi-finals and finals, Telemundo is ramping up its live production efforts to improve the presentation of the final, decisive matches.
“We are really in production for the final round,” Lorenzo said. “As we get closer to the final round and elimination, the stakes are higher and the interest is higher. For some of these matches, we still have some big names that we’re planning to use for the finals. We’ve already worked with a lot of big names during this World Cup, both on some things we had planned and things that happened naturally after that.”
Developing and executing World Cup coverage was a significant learning experience as Telemundo and Peacock work together to provide fans with a powerful multi-platform viewing experience.
“We’ve done a lot of work in collaboration with Peacock to take the World Cup experience on Peacock to another level. We implemented Spanish (user interface) on Peacock right before the World Cup. There are a lot of new features that the Peacock team has rolled out ahead of this World Cup, including a multi-view experience, alternate camera angles on certain matches, and vertical video. But it’s not just the matches. It’s truly the experience. Peacock It’s very easy to search and navigate within. And there’s marketing behind it.”
Lorenzo also paid tribute to Telemundo’s 125 local affiliate stations, including 31 NBCUniversal-owned stations and 94 independently owned stations.
“Telemundo has the largest regional Spanish-speaking presence in the country, and our local stations play a critical role in raising awareness and generating coverage at the local level,” Lorenzo said. “This is part of how we are able to cover the World Cup so extensively, attending all 104 matches in all these cities.”
The final week of the World Cup is expected to be packed with punches, with two of the world’s favorites to be selected. For Telemundo and NBCUniversal, this tournament was an exciting opportunity to test the limits of innovative broadcast, digital and social media options and enhancements.
“When you look at the record number of viewers for this World Cup and the ratings across different platforms, you can see how the fans in this country have wholeheartedly embraced this World Cup and football in general in a way we have never seen before,” Lorenzos said. “And I think Telemundo’s coverage of this World Cup has helped take World Cup coverage to another level on all of these platforms.”
(Above photo: Telemundo’s World Cup anchor team is on the road to cover all 104 games live.)
