Off the Crossbar has a link to an article on World Cup TV Ratings in the USA. Somewhere, an ESPN exec is bound to be fired, hopefully because 21 million (or 42%) of Univision’s audience were non-Hispanic. Presumably, the majority were english-speaking fans who were not swayed by the American networks decision to bring in a Baseball announcer and soccer novice for the biggest sporting event on the planet.
Over the course of the 64-game tournament, Univision drew an estimated
50m viewers to its three US networks, 21m of whom were non-Hispanic,
according to Nielsen figures.
I’m not convinced the Univision announcers are that much better than ESPN (Yes – I’m bilingual). From referring to German midfielder Lahm as "El Cordero" or "The Lamb", to telling us that one of the Argentinean players (iirc) is nicknamed the "Gardener", to using Chilavert as a color-commentator, Univision/Telefuture had its share of annoying announcers. But they certainly have more respect for the sport and know how to televise it.