The 2026 World Cup Was Watched in Spanish. By People Who Don’t Speak Spanish. Here’s Why That’s Not Surprising.
According to Nielsen ratings, 20% of Telemundo’s World Cup viewers spoke English as their primary language. Jackson Braunius, a Michigan native, watched from a bar in Miami Lakes. He speaks almost no Spanish. “I know ‘cerveza,’” he said, tapping his beer glass. He watched on Telemundo anyway. “I figured out the science here.” He was not alone. And this was not new.
The 2026 World Cup set records for television viewership in the United States. Fox Sports, which broadcast the games in English, averaged 5 million viewers per match across the 72 group stage matches. Telemundo, which broadcast in Spanish, captured nearly half of all World Cup viewers in the country: 48% of the combined audience across the group stage watched at least one match in Spanish. The final between Spain and Argentina drew 38.9 million on Fox and 23.9 million on Telemundo and Peacock. Out of those 23.9 million Spanish-language viewers, approximately 20% did not speak Spanish as their primary language. They chose Telemundo anyway. The question of why is the most interesting sports media story of the summer.
——— THE REASON ———
WHY TELEMUNDO SOUNDS DIFFERENT
Why Americans Watched the World Cup in Spanish: The Four Reasons That Keep Coming Up
The reasons English-speaking viewers gave for watching on Telemundo cluster into four categories, cited consistently across surveys, interviews, and social media conversations throughout the tournament.
The first is Andrés Cantor. The Argentine-American broadcaster has been calling soccer in the United States since 1987, first for Univision and then for Telemundo, and his elongated “¡Goooooool!” call has become the most recognizable sound in American soccer coverage. His voice has been featured on The Simpsons, in national advertising campaigns for Visa and Coors, and as the ringtone of an alarm clock. When he called Argentina’s equalizer against Egypt in Atlanta in the Round of 16, the crowd in the domed stadium was so loud that he could not hear himself narrating. “The crowd went so wild, and it was a domed stadium, the crowd noise got into my headset,” he told NPR. “I couldn’t hear myself while I was yelling goal.” It was his tenth World Cup.
The second reason is broadcast philosophy. Telemundo keeps its cameras on the field during the hydration breaks, the mandatory pauses in each half that were introduced on player welfare grounds and that were universally booed by stadium crowds throughout the tournament. Fox cuts to commercials during the same window. Viewers who wanted uninterrupted soccer found it on Telemundo. Several of them said so explicitly in interviews with the Associated Press and NPR during the tournament.
The third is the energy of the narration itself. A 24-year-old viewer named Canales, raised in Rhode Island by a father who played for the Honduran national team, explained it to CNN this way: the way Telemundo’s announcers start talking faster as the action on the pitch intensifies is its own kind of language. “Sometimes I just doze off if it’s in English,” he said. Cantor himself has described the difference in cultural terms. “People who didn’t fully understand Spanish switched to Univision because of a way of interpreting the game,” he said, “and, let’s say, the passion of the Hispanic commentator.” The fourth reason is price: Peacock, which carries Telemundo, costs less than Fox One. Some viewers made a purely economic decision. The entertainment followed.
“I can’t tell you how many comments I’ve seen where people are saying, ‘I don’t speak a lick of Spanish, but I want to watch it on Telemundo because it just sounds more exciting. And maybe by the end of the World Cup, I’ll learn Spanish.’ Joy and excitement and drama: it’s language agnostic, it’s universal.”
Joaquin Lorenzo, EVP Telemundo Sports · NPR · July 2, 2026 ·
——— THE HISTORY ———
THIS HAPPENED IN 1994 TOO
Why Americans Watched the World Cup in Spanish: This Is Not New. It Started in 1994.
The 2026 story has a direct precedent. The 1994 World Cup was hosted in the United States, and English-language coverage on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 failed to generate the energy that the sport produces in its natural broadcasting register. American viewers discovered Andrés Cantor, then on Univision, and switched. The Washington Post documented it at the time: “Some English-speaking soccer fans in the United States apparently have turned to Univision, and away from English-language broadcasts on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, because of the energy and lyrical flair Cantor and longtime broadcast partner Norberto Longo bring to their description of, and commentary on, all the games.” Cantor received a Regional Emmy that year and was named Sports Personality of the Year by the American Sportscasters Association.
The consequence of that 1994 shift was structural. After the tournament, English-language soccer coverage in the United States evolved significantly, adopting elements of Hispanic-style narration. The energy, the pace, the willingness to let emotion into the booth — these became part of how soccer sounded in English too, because the audience had been shaped by the Spanish-language version. The Anglo-American broadcasting tradition for soccer, inherited from British television, was modified by the contact with Latin American broadcasting style that 1994 made unavoidable.
In 2026, the same thing happened at a larger scale. Telemundo’s viewership increased by 122% from the 2022 World Cup. The network’s social media platforms surpassed one billion views during the tournament. 20% of those viewers did not speak Spanish. The pattern that began in 1994 with a handful of fans at home has become, thirty-two years later, a documented Nielsen demographic. The Hispanic broadcaster did not follow the American soccer audience. The American soccer audience followed the Hispanic broadcaster.
“People who didn’t fully understand Spanish switched to Univision because of a way of interpreting the game, and, let’s say, the passion of the Hispanic commentator.” Andrés Cantor, Telemundo broadcaster, on why English speakers have been choosing Spanish-language World Cup coverage since 1994.
——— THE BIGGER PICTURE ———
WHAT IT MEANS
Why Americans Watched the World Cup in Spanish: What the Telemundo Numbers Actually Mean
The 20% figure is a data point about a broadcast preference. What it represents is something larger: the normalization of Spanish-language media as a primary cultural entry point for a major American sporting event, across demographic lines. The United States Census Bureau estimates that approximately 20% of the U.S. population is Hispanic. Telemundo’s own numbers show that nearly half of all World Cup viewers in the country watched at least some portion of the tournament in Spanish — more than double the Hispanic share of the population. The non-Hispanic viewers who crossed over are not an anomaly. They are the leading edge of a shift.
The 2026 World Cup was, in multiple senses, a Latino tournament. The stands were filled with Latin American diaspora communities from the group stage to the final. The Round of 16 produced the most viral fan moments. The semifinals were defined by an Argentine Banderazo and a Mexican-Norwegian Viking Row set to banda music. The final was contested by Spain and Argentina — the two nations with the deepest soccer cultures in the Spanish-speaking world. And the tournament was narrated, for nearly half its American audience, in the language that has been calling soccer on this continent for more than eighty years.
Jackson Braunius of Michigan figured out the science. Twenty percent of Telemundo’s audience agreed with him. The other eighty percent never needed to figure it out. They already knew.
20% of Telemundo’s World Cup viewers spoke English as their primary language. 48% of all American World Cup viewers watched at least one match in Spanish. Telemundo viewership up 122% from 2022. One billion social media views. Andrés Cantor couldn’t hear himself calling Messi’s goal in Atlanta because the crowd was too loud. This started in 1994. It is larger now.
The game was always in Spanish. The audience finally caught up.
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