Advertisers shelled out almost $100 million on U.S. TV commercials in and around the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, exceeding expectations.

The flood of ad dollars highlights the appeal of the tournament on Madison Avenue and its ability to drive revenue for TV networks.

Ad-tracker Kantar said that the Women’s World Cup, which the U.S. team won in July, brought in an estimated $96 million, more than double the company’s earlier estimate of $43 million.

Kantar’s initial projection did not include ad revenue generated by Spanish-language networks owned by Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, including Telemundo, which accounted for about 11% of the $96 million. Fox Corp. networks broadcast the matches in English.

The rest of the discrepancy could be due to a number of potential factors, including high demand for last-minute ad buys, according to a Kantar spokesman.

The research company used different data sets to calculate its earlier figure, which was based in part on ad spending in the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and its final estimate, which used actual data from ad buyers and sellers.

“Demand was high for the Women’s World Cup in the U.S.,” said Jeremy Carey, managing director at Omnicom Group sports ad buying agency Optimum Sports. “[Fox] sold every impression they could sell.”

The U.S. women’s team drew massive publicity during its run toward a fourth World Cup title this summer, aided by its dominance on the field and co-captain Megan Rapinoe, who made headlines this summer after a video surfaced of her saying she wouldn’t visit the White House if the team won.

Money in the World Cup took the spotlight after the U.S. women’s team this year sued the U.S. Soccer Federation, claiming its players make less than players on the U.S. men’s team despite the fact that the women hold the same job responsibilities and win more. U.S. Soccer, a nonprofit, denies discriminating against the women’s team.

The complex nature of soccer’s business arrangements and differences between the tournaments make it hard to directly compare revenue and player compensation.

The men’s World Cup last year drew $350 million in TV advertising in the U.S., Kantar said. Its estimates in both cases count ads during halftime, pre- and post-match coverage and encore telecasts, plus other peripheral programming. Kantar has updated its methodology since the prior World Cups, four years earlier.

The women’s tournament spanned 52 matches, compared with 64 for the men’s, and included about half the commercial time, according to Kantar.

TV ad revenue doesn’t flow directly to players’ pay. U.S. Soccer pays the teams from revenue generated through operations such as ticket sales and sponsorships.

TV programmers spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to the tournaments, but those deals are between the TV networks and FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.

A Fox spokesperson said it does not comment on its financials.

Strong ad sales and ratings for a World Cup, however, can reflect team popularity and translate into revenue for U.S. Soccer. The ongoing five-game U.S. women’s team victory tour, for instance, recently drew nearly 50,000 ticket-buying fans in Philadelphia.

There’s been an “awakening” in terms of how brand clients are thinking about the Women’s World Cup, said Andre Schunk, executive vice president at sports marketing agency Octagon.


The women’s tournament as a whole averaged 992,000 U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen. The men’s contest averaged 2.3 million U.S. viewers across all matches.

Still, the women’s championship match this year averaged far more viewers in the U.S. than the most recent men’s final, according to Nielsen. (The U.S. men failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament in Russia.)

Fox charged more for ads in this year’s Women’s World Cup, which took place in France, than in the 2015 tournament in Canada, despite the fact that advertisers last time had the benefit of a U.S.-friendly North American time zone, said Optimum’s Mr. Carey. Strong viewership in 2015 served as a base for Fox when selling ads, and advertisers saw the value in this year’s tournament, he said.

The Women’s World Cup represented Visa Inc.’s largest global marketing outlay in 2019, said Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation marketing officer at the company.

Visa, the official payment services sponsor for FIFA, secured a contract with U.S. Soccer that allocates at least 50% of the company’s investment to the U.S. women’s team and the federation’s women’s programming initiatives, according to a spokesperson.

Fox Corp. and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.

Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com and Rachel Bachman at rachel.bachman@wsj.com