Going for (the Other) Gold
It’s hard to fathom given that we’re still dealing with a global pandemic, but summer 2021 has featured a barrage of major international sporting events. First there were Euro 2020 and Copa America, both of which made headlines for venue shuffling and concerns about super-spreading before culminating in thrilling finales. The unorthodox buildup toward the continental soccer tournaments, however, paled in comparison to what Japan has dealt with ahead of and during the Tokyo Summer Games.
With all of that, you’d be forgiven for not realizing we’re in the midst of the CONCACAF Gold Cup, which concludes tonight with the United States taking on Mexico. If you’re interested in sports ratings, however, it’s best not to overlook this clash of North American titans.
The last time these two teams met was in this year’s CONCACAF Nations League Final, which averaged 4.2 million total viewers on Univision alone (not counting the undisclosed number of viewers who watched in English on CBS Sports Network and Paramount+). That was the most-watched soccer match on U.S. television — prior to this month’s Euro 2020 final — since the same two sides met in the 2019 Gold Cup Final, which drew a combined audience of 8.7 million viewers between Univision (5.9 million) and Fox Sports 1 (2.8 million).
For CONCACAF’s broadcast partners, particularly Univision, the success of the Gold Cup in terms of viewership hinges on the United States and Mexico — the federation’s only two nations in the top 40 of FIFA’s world rankings — duking it out for the title. Fortunately, the two favorites have once again delivered, and the result will likely be the country’s largest soccer audience of the year.
This Week in Tokyo:
The full TV listings for NBC’s Olympic coverage can be found here. Here are some highlights this week:
Laurel Hubbard becomes the first transgender woman to compete in the Olympics tomorrow.
Why it’s worth watching: Hubbard, who will represent New Zealand in the women’s over-87 kg weightlifting event, has the second-highest odds from sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel to win tomorrow’s competition, meaning she is a legitimate medal contender. Her historic appearance in the Olympics could be a major flashpoint in the debate about transgender participation in women’s sports, particularly if she finds her way to the podium.
See Morning Consult’s recent story on Hubbard for insight into how Americans feel about trans women competing against other female athletes and, in particular, the role of testosterone in the discussion.
Also tomorrow, the U.S. national team takes on Canada in the women’s soccer semifinals.
Why it’s worth watching: Perhaps no entity has more to gain from the success of the women’s national team than the NWSL, where the majority of the team’s members play their club soccer between appearances on the international stage. A gold medal run would allow the league to leverage the attention the team will certainly receive to attract fans to their stadiums and broadcasts.
Sport climbing and karate make their Olympic debuts Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
Why it’s worth watching: While neither karate nor sport climbing ranked as the new Olympic sports that Americans are most interested in watching at the Summer Games (those were baseball/softball and surfing), there’s reason to believe that individual disciplines within each have potential to be entertaining spectator sports that could catch on. In climbing, the “speed” discipline pits two climbers against each other on adjacent identical walls in races that last just seconds, while the “kumite” discipline of karate pits fighters head to head a la “The Karate Kid.”
