On any given World Cup matchday, the tournament sprawls far past the edges of the television screen. In Kansas City, downtown becomes the epicenter, thousands packed into the Power & Light District angling for a cameo on the live Fox broadcast. In non-host cities like Washington, D.C., embassy-sponsored watch parties still spill out of restaurants and bars, supporters draped in vintage and current kits from countries most Americans couldn’t find on a map a month ago. Social media feeds churn with reaction videos, memes, and highlight clips before the final whistle even blows, while family WhatsApp threads light up in a dozen languages across a dozen time zones.

And yet by the next day, the conversation about whether the tournament is “working” collapses into a single, familiar number: the Nielsen rating.

It’s an understandable benchmark, as ratings remain the currency of the television business, shaping advertising, media rights, and programming decisions. But treating the World Cup like any other property on the American sports calendar misreads what it actually is. The NFL, NBA, and MLB are built on domestic fandom; the World Cup draws audiences connected by heritage, nationality, and a shared global experience.

That distinction becomes even clearer when compared to other major American sports. The Super Bowl remains the gold standard for gauging viewership success, drawing more than 126 million viewers for this year’s showdown. Its surrounding festivities, from the NFL Experience to endless concerts, are massive, but they’re largely concentrated in one city over a few days.

The World Cup operates on an entirely different scale. Over the course of a month, the tournament transforms 16 host cities into interconnected celebrations, with official FIFA Fan Festivals, public watch parties, and cultural activations designed to attract supporters, whether or not they paid thousands for match tickets.

The NBA Finals also generate enormous discourse and camaraderie, but they don’t prompt embassies, tourism boards, restaurants, and local governments to build weeks of events around a shared global experience. At most, as seen by the New York Knicks’ history-making title last month, there were unique celebrations across all five boroughs and a select few nationwide.

If the group stage proved the World Cup’s scale, the knockout rounds have proven its staying power. FIFA Fan Festivals continued to draw capacity crowds well into the Round of 16, with some sites filling up hours before kickoff. In Houston, the Fan Festival hit its 7,500-person cap nearly four hours before Mexico’s Round of 16 match against England, forcing organizers to shut the gates and reroute fans to overflow viewing areas.

The World Cup’s reach also extends into places that traditional ratings simply weren’t designed to measure.

Consider the conversations happening away from the match itself. On TikTok and Instagram, supporters dissect everything from Congo’s pre-match tunnel fits to Matheus Cunha’s surfing goal celebration and Colombia’s recognizable “¡Oe, Oe, Oe, Colombia!” chant. Those moments add to the tournament’s cultural importance, generating engagement that often supersedes any action on the pitch.

Because the World Cup creates dozens of parallel storylines rooted in national identity, fashion, and tradition, there’s no prerequisite to be a massive footy fan to participate. If you’re a lover of unconventional textiles or a commercial Afrobeats song, there’s a chance you’ll find something outside the 90 minutes of play that’s worth bringing up with peers.

For advertisers, sponsors, and broadcasters, the World Cup’s valuation isn’t just quantified by who’s watching, but rather who those people are and how they engage. According to Nielsen, U.S. soccer fans are more responsive to brand sponsorships than fans of the NFL, NBA, or MLB. Furthermore, they’re more likely to choose sponsor-supported products, pay attention to brand messaging, and engage with companies associated with the sport. This explains why Adidas transformed Brooklyn Bridge Park into the Home of Soccer in New York for the final matches of the group stage, bringing fans closer to their favorite athletes such as David Beckham, Paul Pogba, and Trinity Rodman.

World Cup fans also over-index in areas outside of sports, with 69% expressing an interest in arts and culture compared to 52% of the general population, a figure that jumps to 78% among Hispanic World Cup fans. The same dynamic is reflected in how the tournament reaches audiences. Nielsen estimates there are more than 62 million soccer fans in the United States, making it the fourth-largest soccer fanbase in the world, with nearly two-thirds of fans expecting their interest in the sport to continue growing after the World Cup. As that audience becomes younger, more multicultural, and increasingly platform-agnostic, reducing the tournament’s success to a single ratings figure feels insufficient.

The off-pitch conversation has proven just as durable as the action on it. Every knockout round has generated its own share of viral moments, from that infamous red card decision to unforgettable goals to fan celebrations that will be talked about until the 2030 competition. That’s an important distinction because they’re part of how millions of us experience the tournament, even if its virality eventually fades.

The World Cup was never built to the specifications of a normal sporting event. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that it keeps slipping past the metrics designed to contain it.

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