The tactical build-up to the USA’s World Cup game against Portugal on Sunday largely focuses on how the American team can stop one man, Cristiano Ronaldo.

Off the field, however, the talk is around spectators in their tens of thousands and viewers in their millions: as sure a sign of the sport’s development in its final frontier as the dramatic 2-1 win over Ghana on Monday.

That victory, in the US’s first group game, drew more than 11 million viewers on ESPN and nearly 5 million on the Spanish-language channel Univision, making it the highest-rated men’s soccer match ever shown on the ESPN network.

Through the tournament’s first 23 games, ESPN broadcasts averaged an increase of 21% on the first 23 games of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Then, kick-off times were generally earlier and so less favourable for a north American audience.

With the wave of hype that followed Monday’s dramatic win, a favourable 6pm Sunday Eastern Time start and more glamorous opposition, the game against Portugal should easily exceed the Ghana ratings. That means it might even engage a bigger average audience than last Sunday’s decisive fifth game of the NBA Finals, when according to Nielsen nearly 18 million viewers saw the San Antonio Spurs beat the Miami Heat.

In contrast, last year’s Major League Baseball World Series averaged a modest 14.9 million viewers, while this year’s Stanley Cup final between the Los Angeles Kings and the New York Rangers attracted about 5 million viewers.

Though underdogs, the Americans will be optimistic of causing an upset in remote and humid Manaus which could seal their place in the knockout stages. Portugal lost 4-0 to Germany in their first Group G game and Ronaldo, arguably the planet’s best player, is nursing an injury to his left knee.

Nearly 25 million US viewers tuned into the 2010 World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, which was broadcast on ABC and Univision. That beat the 21.2 million average viewership for NFL regular-season games on Fox in 2013, though ratings for the NFL playoffs are far higher and this year’s Super Bowl – the most-watched programme in US television history – drew about 112 million people.



While they cannot rival the other football, US soccer matches at least seem to be attracting some of the same big-event buzz and encouraging fans to watch together, whether at home, in a bar or outdoors. The US Soccer Federation is hosting large-scale watch parties at Grant Park in Chicago, the city where it is headquartered.

Fans are also travelling in greater numbers to watch the team in person. More than 154,000 tickets were sold by Fifa to supporters in the US, the largest number of any country apart from Brazil – though it is impossible to say how many of those fans support the American team.

USA fans gather in Grant Park, Chicago. Photograph: Max Herman/ Max Herman/Demotix/Corbis

Still, the US travelling clan has clearly grown, partly thanks to the efforts of well-organised supporters’ groups such as the American Outlaws, which was founded in 2007 and which claims to have more than 18,000 members in over 125 chapters. Media at the Ghana game in Natal estimated that between a third and half of the 39,760 crowd were backing Jürgen Klinsmann’s team.

“That was one of the really neat things about the first game, hearing the national anthem and it almost feeling like a home game. Being far away and having all those fans there for us was just an amazing feeling,” said midfielder Kyle Beckerman.

"We had heard that there was a ton of Americans, so we were anticipating that,” said goalkeeper Tim Howard. "And it was fun for once just to have the upper hand.”

Greg Conley, a Bostonian who was in the crowd and has attended every World Cup since 1990, said that excluding the 1994 tournament, which was hosted by the US, Monday’s game was “the first time I saw the US fan base dominate, and that's the correct word, a stadium – as well as outside the stadium and the vicinity of the stadium in the hours leading up to the game and after the game.”