NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Wednesday’s UEFA Champions League game between Manchester United and Chelsea could be one of the soccer competition’s most-watched games in the U.S., judging by recent viewing figures, which show a dramatic rise in the number of Americans watching the sport.

Manchester United and Chelsea, between them winners of the past six Barclays English Premier League titles, will go head-to-head in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League, which sees the top clubs from Europe take each other on.

Manchester United's Paul Scholes is challenged by Chelsea's Ramires during the teams’ last meeting on March 1. Reuters

European club soccer is one of the fastest-growing televised sports in the U.S., with executives of the two main soccer broadcasters reporting dramatic increases in viewership.

“The audience growth we’re seeing for the Premier League is right up there with our top sports,” said Scott Guglielmino, senior vice president of programming at ESPN, who oversees the network’s soccer coverage.

This season, three Premier League games on ESPN have garnered more than 500,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Co., which collects data on viewership. Last season just one game broke that mark — a matchup between Manchester United and Chelsea in April that all but decided the Premiership title.

Meanwhile, February’s Premier League game between Chelsea and Liverpool was the most-watched broadcast in Fox Soccer Channel’s history, with an average audience of 418,000. Fox Soccer’s average audience for the last full Premier League season, from August 2009 to May 2010, was up roughly 75% from the previous year.

“The growth of audiences for international soccer has been taking off,” said Stephen Master, vice president of Nielsen Sports. “These are very impressive numbers, especially considering the time slots.”

The figures are comparable to those for National Hockey League games or regular-season college basketball games, said Master. That’s all the more impressive given that Fox Soccer Channel is only in 40 million homes — about 40% of cable-owning households — and, unlike U.S. sports, games are virtually never in prime time. Due to time zones, European soccer games are shown either early mornings on weekends or at midafternoon Eastern time on weekdays.

Wednesday’s game — kickoff 2:45 p.m. Eastern — is close to a dream contest for TV executives. Manchester United and Chelsea are, ratingswise, the two most popular teams in the most popular soccer league.

“The Premier League is without question the mainstay of the channel,” said David Nathanson, executive vice president of Fox Soccer.

Fox is owned by News Corp. NWS, +1.52% , which also owns MarketWatch, the publisher of this report.

Champion viewers

Fox Soccer took over coverage of Champions League games in fall 2009. In its second season, the channel has seen a jump in audience: Average viewership for last year’s Round of 16 games was 139,000; this year, that figure is 158,000. With the Manchester United–Chelsea matchup in the quarterfinal, and a potential Barcelona–Real Madrid semifinal on tap, ratings for the later stages could be well ahead of last year’s numbers.

Guglielmino said part of the success is simply due to U.S. viewers being able to watch some of the top brands in world sports. Various studies have found that clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea, Barcelona and Real Madrid are among the best-known sports franchises in the world.

But another part of the increase this season is due to last summer’s World Cup. ESPN saw its highest-ever average audience for the competition — 3.3 million for each game — up 41% from 2006’s tournament. That has helped increase general soccer audiences following the event.

“It’s important to see the World Cup as a global event that transcends its sport,” in the way that people watch tennis and golf majors in much larger numbers than the nonmajors, said Guglielmino.

“But there’s also clearly the opportunity [to gain] new fans from the World Cup, for example fans following their favorite players back to their clubs,” he added. “It does drive new awareness and new audiences.”

“The World Cup was so well-received that it helped lift all soccer,” said Fox Soccer’s Nathanson, who attributed the ratings jump for the 2009-10 Premier League season to excitement building ahead of the global event.

“Our job is to capture the World Cup’s halo effect and keep that momentum going,” he said.

As part of that effort, Fox will show the Champions League final on its network channel, a repeat of its approach last year.

About 1.6 million people watched that game, between Inter Milan and Bayern Munich, on Fox — a 14% rise from the previous year’s final between Barcelona and Manchester United, which was broadcast on ESPN. The former game was on a Saturday, while the latter was played on a Wednesday.

Fox is pushing ahead with broadening its Champions League audience this year, for the first time showing one leg of each semifinal — before the final, the knockout stages are two-legged, home-and-away affairs — on its FX channel. FX is in 99 million homes, more than double Fox Soccer’s reach.

“We’re giving more — and unprecedented — exposure for this year’s Champions League,” said Nathanson.