Telemundo kicks up World Cup ad smack

Telemundo is thumbing its nose at rival Univision over its World Cup performance.

Telemundo, which has the exclusive Spanish-language rights to air the soccer tournament, is celebrating over its better-than-expected advertising revenue, despite less-than stellar ratings.

Laura Molen, executive vice president of lifestyle and Hispanic advertising sales group at NBCUniversal, said she expects revenue to top $225 mil- lion, besting Univision’s $177 million for the 2014 World Cup, according to Standard Media Index. Telemundo’s number could approach $300 million when factoring in revenue from its local stations, a spokesman said.

Telemundo attributed its revenue gains to higher ad spending among studios and personal-technology brands, as well as to an uptick in digital advertising. Four years ago, streaming wasn’t as prevalent, the rep noted, adding that Telemundo has netted 125 million consumers streaming the games to date, with Mexico versus Swedennabbing 6.9 million livestreams.

Still, Univision’s TV ratings in 2014 were higher than Telemundo’s. Through the tournament’s quarterfinals, Telemundo has drawn an average audience of 1.8 million, down from Univision’s 3.5 million viewers in 2014, according to Nielsen.

Fox Sports, which nabbed the English-language rights to the World Cup this year from ESPN and ABC, is also lagging. Through the quarterfinals, Fox averaged 2.5 million viewers, down from 3.8 million on ESPN/ABC four years earlier. It cited that the US team is not in this year’s World Cup.

Both Telemundo and Fox blamed the times that the games were live in the US for the drop in ratings. This year’s matches are in Russia, versus a more US friendly time zone in Brazil four years earlier.

As for Sunday’s final match, it remains to be seen if the two networks can bring in the 24.7 million total viewers Univision and ESPN garnered in 2014.