Why Big USA-Mexico Gold Cup TV Numbers Are Good And Bad News

Amid lots of fretting over the future of the United States men’s national team less than a year out from the 2026 FIFA World Cup comes TV viewership data that suggests there are still a lot of American fans who care deeply about the program.

The English-language broadcast of the 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup final between the USA and Mexico on Fox drew an average of 3.73 million viewers and peaked at 5.2 million. The telecast marks the largest English-language audience ever for a Gold Cup match, and the largest for any soccer game on Fox since last year’s Copa America final between Argentina and Colombia.

And that’s even before Univision’s Spanish-language American numbers are added in, which are typically even higher than Fox for matches involving Mexico. (Those numbers don’t appear to be available yet).

If nothing else, the data tells us that viewers are far from tired of seeing Concacaf’s biggest rivalry. That’s true even in an era where international relations have become more fraught between the two nations, and while Mexican immigrants to the U.S. are among the most directly impacted by ramped up immigration enforcement efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration. And it’s true despite more direct competition than ever between the nations’ two domestic leagues in the annual Leagues Cup and recently expanded Concacaf Champions Cup.

For the sake of both nations’ future competitive development, the lack of fatigue with the rivalry may be more of a mixed blessing than it first appears.

Does USA Care Too Much About Beating Mexico?

There’s no denying the rivalry is commercially beneficial for both nations. The Mexican federation has made the United States its second (and debatably first) home for national team games for some time now, given the enormous audience of Mexican fans north of the border who have more disposable income than their relatives in the considerably less affluent Mexican economy. And the United States’ ability to consistently give as good as it gets over the last generation of competition against its border rival has given the men’s game precious credibility, even while it still generally struggles against elite European or South American opposition.

At the same time, it’s become increasingly clear that the rivalry isn’t really serving either team’s competitive aims anymore.

From the American perspective, manager Gregg Berhalter’s success over Mexico in one Gold Cup final and two Nations League meetings was often touted as some of the best support for his continued employment. That hid the fact that Mexico was historically below average for most of Berhalter’s tenure. And if you removed performances against El Tri, the United States was exactly average – not better or worse – in its competitive performances both in Concacaf and then on the world stage. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the U.S. advanced from its group and then got bounced by a superior Dutch side in the second round, the identical fate of the 2010 and 2014 U.S. World Cup teams.

None of this is to say Berhalter’s first cycle was a disaster. But it wasn’t exceptional either. And some viewed it as such solely because of those Mexico performances when making the case for Berhalter’s continued employment beyond 2022. The decision to renew Berhalter is a major reason the program finds itself amid such uncertainty now.

Mexican Regional Dominance Hasn’t Translated Either

Meanwhile, Mexico’s lack of improvement on the global stage is perhaps even more damning as the Western Hemisphere’s third-most populous nation, and one where soccer is decidedly the most popular sport.

Sunday’s victory marked Mexico’s record 10th Concacaf Gold Cup title since the tournament began in 1991. In that time, Mexico has played in eight World Cups. The first seven times, they’ve reached the second round but no further. Then in 2022, they failed to advance from a group that included Argentina, Poland and Saudi Arabia.

Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay are all less populous Western Hemisphere nations. All have reached at least one quarterfinal over that span, with Argentina of course winning the whole tournament in 2022 and Uruguay finishing third in 2010.

None of them have more money in their domestic league systems than Mexico has in Liga MX. But perhaps driven by continued lust for continental superiority, Mexican clubs have increasingly become exporters rather than developers of talent. The result is domination of the Concacaf Champions Cup, and a shallower player pool for El Tri.

A Trap Of Concacaf’s Making

The era of increased continental competition in Concacaf has brought only marginal improvement for the United States and basically none for Mexico. And yet at a time when Concacaf should be moving toward a less insular competitive calendar to allow for more of its elite teams to play higher quality opponents, it is doing the opposite.

The insistence of playing the Gold Cup every two years, plus the more recent creation of the Concacaf Nations League, means there’s the potential for the USA and Mexico to play five competitive finals against each other in every World Cup cycle. That’s to say nothing of future World Cup qualifying for 2030 and beyond.

And so far the audiences don’t appear to be getting tired of it. In fact, quite the opposite. Which means we can expect American and Mexican soccer to continue to get wealthier in the near future. But probably not much better.