Nielsen: Fox, NBCUniversal, ABC Top June Household TV With FIFA World Cup, ‘Love Island USA,’ NBA Finals

Erik Gruenwedel

August 18, 2026

As expected, the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament drove outsized household television engagement with more than 84 billion minutes viewed in June across Fox and NBCUniversal properties, according to new Nielsen data.

The combination of World Cup matches on Fox Sports, Fox One streaming, Telemundo, Peacock, and NBA Finals on ABC Sports helped drive a 118% increase in broadcast sports viewing, and led the broadcast category to 19.8% of TV and its first increase during June since Nielsen starting tracking the data in 2021.

Fos had the largest gain in share of TV (0.9%) compared to May, and the largest overall viewing increase among all distributors (18%). The World Cup surge boosted viewing on Fox affiliates 73%, and Fox Sports 1 was up 232%. Fox concluded the month with 7.4% of total TV watch-time and moved up to No. 5 in the Media Distributor Gauge rankings.

NBCU-Versant represented 9.1% of total TV viewing in June (up 0.7%), and its success was a result of two material drivers: NBCU’s Telemundo served as the exclusive home to all Spanish-language World Cup coverage, which drove a 143% monthly viewing increase to its broadcast affiliates in June.

Peacock benefited from Telemundo’s World Cup coverage, as days with games exhibited a 60% audience increase on the platform over those that did not, and viewing from Hispanic audiences increased nearly 200% compared to the prior month.

Peacock’s 34% total monthly viewing increase was also due to owning June’s most-streamed title, “Love Island USA”. The six-night-per-week appointment viewing for the reality dating series generated 6.8 billion minutes across the month. Overall, Peacock gained half a share point to represent 2.3% of total TV viewing in June, its second-best share of TV to date behind February 2026.

Overall streaming usage was up about 3% compared to May, but due to it being just below the 3.1% increase for total TV usage, the category dropped to 48.5% of TV watch-time. In addition to Peacock, several other streamers also saw monthly viewing increases, including YouTube, Netflix, The Roku Channel and Paramount Streaming (Paramount+ and Pluto TV combined), but similar to the overall streaming category, their shares were flat or down slightly. However, YouTube remained in the lead among media distributors with 13.8% of time spent.

Disney held on to the No. 2 spot among media companies with 9.6% of TV. ABC’s coverage of the five-game NBA Finals showdown between the San Antonio Spurs and eventual champion New York Knicks helped drive a 15% viewing bump for ABC affiliates in June. Each game of the series was the most-viewed broadcast telecast on days played, and Games 3, 4 and 5 were the most watched telecasts over the June interval with more than 20 million viewers a piece.

Cable represented 19.5% of the television market as viewing was down 2% compared to May. This was largely due to the absence of the NBA and NHL playoffs, which led to a 10% monthly decline in cable sports viewership.

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