USA national teams are thriving. Our athletes took home a record number of gold medals at the Winter Olympics. That includes the top prizes in both men’s and women’s hockey. We were cruising along in the World Baseball Classic…until the end. Still, a silver medal in that event is the third straight time we have made the final. And the US women are bound to be the favorite at the FIBA World Cup this summer. They cruised through the qualifying stage earlier this month, winning by fewer than 30 points only once in their five games.
People are watching too. The WBC Final drew its highest ratings ever. The Olympic hockey finals drew huge audiences for both the men’s and women’s events, key components of NBC’s major ratings success for the entire Olympics.
The US vs. everyone else is good business in the sports world, particularly when Americans are being bombarded with stories about the US vs. everyone else in the real world. So, does that mean we should expect ESPN and other networks to create more events that can capitalize on jingoism-driven ratings?
Right now, that plan looks tempting. More than 11 million tuned in for the World Baseball Classic Final. The Olympic men’s hockey final peaked with more than 20 million viewers. The Olympic women’s hockey final topped out at over 5 million.
They aren’t all records (the WBC and the women’s gold medal game were), but all of them are eye-popping numbers. To put it in perspective, college basketball is currently enjoying one of its most-watched seasons in years, and even the lowest number, the women’s hockey gold medal game, dwarfs the average audiences for college hoops on CBS, ESPN, and Fox this season.
Say what you want about the Olympics, there is no bigger international sporting event than FIFA’s World Cup. We may not be a soccer country, but when the US plays, the US watches. Every single game the USMNT played in the 2022 tournament delivered more than 11 million viewers, peaking with a Black Friday draw against England, which was watched by just under 20 million people.
The 2022 Final peaked at more than 25 million viewers in the US, despite kicking off on a Sunday at 7 am Pacific Time and 10 am Eastern Time. With the 2026 tournament being held on North American soil, the time windows will be much more compatible with US TV schedules.
Fox has big expectations for the 2026 tournament. If the USMNT can solve its striker problem, it should cruise to the top of Group D and easily make the knockout round. Between Donald Trump going to goofy lengths to ensure this event is part of his legacy and the immigrant communities in the US looking for the same kind of moment Venezuela got in the World Baseball Classic, there is plenty of buildup. The network isn’t crazy to expect a huge payoff.
The 2026 patriotism doesn’t end there. Two months after we crown a world champion in soccer, the FIBA Women’s World Cup tips off in Germany. TNT Sports is betting that the star power of Caitlin Clark is enough to get you to tune in.
It doesn’t end in 2026 either. We get FIBA’s Men’s World Cup and FIFA’s Women’s World Cup in 2027. The Summer Olympics will be on US soil in 2028. Hockey will be playing its World Cup that year, too. Networks are going to be betting on patriotism for a long time.
But does that mean that TV executives are about to start falling all over themselves to buy up the rights to every world championship competition they can get their hands on? I wouldn’t bet on it. Olympic hockey and the World Baseball Classic benefited from the US vs. the world nature of the competition, but they were also carried by the fact that these were sports familiar to American audiences, played by people we already know.
ESPNews is now just running the ridiculous “The Ocho” events on a loop. A lot of those are the world championships of something, and the ratings don’t look anything like Olympic hockey or the World Baseball Classic. In fact, I don’t see evidence that anyone outside of gyms and airport bars is even aware that ESPNews still exists.
Even in the packaging of the Olympics, sports Americans don’t know intimately didn’t exactly thrive when Team USA succeeded. Audiences tuned in to the gold medal curling match between the US and Sweden. They didn’t exactly stick around.
Familiarity doesn’t guarantee anything, though. Yes, the World Baseball Classic was a success, but the final’s 10.87 million viewers would have made it the lowest-rated World Series game since 2023. Despite Aaron Judge’s insistence, the World Baseball Classic is just a novelty. For American sports fans, the World Series holds greater significance.
If you want to argue that the sports calendar is a little crowded right now with March Madness taking up so much of America’s attention, I would point out that Game 2 of the World Series is usually played on a college football Saturday night, and in the last two years, those games have averaged 11.4 and 13.7 million viewers, respectively. When it comes to baseball, America’s priority is the league it watches year in and year out.
Maybe in the 2028 Summer Olympics, something will pop. France looks poised to be a real problem for Team USA. Does that mean the men’s basketball gold medal game will be must-see TV? Maybe.
If the US is on a run in either men’s or women’s volleyball, maybe that gold medal final could deliver a big rating. The same could be true if the US gets a rematch with Venezuela in the gold medal baseball game and real stars are on the field, but is that about the USA vs. the world or about the Olympics?
Flag football will be the interesting test case. NBC, USA Football, and the NFL have all done their part to promote the sport and its once-in-a-lifetime international stage.
The Olympics will have to do all the heavy lifting, though. American audiences have not shown up to watch flag football on TV in any form. They don’t seem eager to watch it in person either. Maybe that’s about the lack of violence in this version of football. I would bet it’s because the Pro Bowl and the Fanatics Flag Football Classic have treated the sport like a sideshow.
America vs. the world is having a moment. We can pretend it’s about larger societal issues and our country’s global standing, but let’s be real. We don’t define our fandom in national pride the way some other countries do.
What Americans love is a big, familiar event with big names. Olympic hockey? Big event! The World Baseball Classic? Hey, we know how baseball works! The World Cup? International superstars, especially in the eyes of younger audiences!
American eyeballs don’t show up just because it’s the USA versus the world. Any network executive who thinks that’s what this moment is about is only getting half the message. We turn on the TV for the USA versus the world in a sport we like, with players we know, when it’s the best vs the best. Patriotism be damned, if you don’t have the star power, we aren’t interested.
About Demetri Ravanos
Demetri Ravanos is a writer and broadcaster living in Raleigh, NC. He is also the host of This Team is Killing Us, a podcast about the Carolina Panthers.