Chelsea captain reacts to Donald Trump presenting Club World Cup trophy
After winning the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, Chelsea FC captain, Reece James, told the media he was surprised President Donald Trump stayed on stage after presenting the trophy.
The 2025 FIFA Club World Cup will go down as one of the most-watched sporting events of the year, with soccer’s governing body on Tuesday announcing a global viewing audience of 2.7 billion people.
Citing an analysis from Nielsen Sports, FIFA said that the figure includes all 63 matches of the tournament, the first ever to include 32 teams. Chelsea was the tournament’s champion, claiming a stunning 3-0 win over pre-tournament favorite Paris Saint-Germain in the final on July 13.
FIFA also stated that “almost 2.5 million” people attended matches throughout the tournament, which was largely clustered towards Eastern time zone venues due to the 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup, a tournament for national teams that took place at the same time.
“These preliminary figures confirm that the FIFA Club World Cup has been a global success and a game-changer,” FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström said in a press release. “From the incredible atmosphere in the stadiums in the United States to 2.7 billion people engaging around the world, the tournament has exceeded expectations.”
Broadcaster DAZN, which held the exclusive rights to carry the Club World Cup, claimed it had achieved “record reach and engagement,” with the company’s CEO Shay Segev saying that “the numbers demonstrate the extraordinary global appetite for accessible, high-quality football content.”
Per FIFA, the official Club World Cup social media accounts gained nine million followers from the start of the tournament, while DAZN reported receiving over 10 billion impressions. At points during the Club World Cup, the event became the most-searched sporting competition on Google.
Nielsen’s analysis showed just how big the tournament was in the world’s most soccer-mad countries. The findings hold that 62% of all Brazilians watched at least some part of the Club World Cup, with the TV Globo network drawing its three largest audiences of 2025 thus far as the nation’s four representatives sprung multiple upsets over European powers.
The Club World Cup picked up a huge audience share in countries that were represented among the participants. The analysis stated that more than 60% of Portugal’s population tuned in for the tournament, underlining the cultural hold clubs like Benfica and Porto (who both qualified) hold there. Audience shares were also massive in Spain (49%) and Italy (48%), with both countries represented by two qualifying teams.
In Saudi Arabia, 77.9% of the TV audience at the time tuned in for one of the upsets of the tournament, a 4-3 win for Al Hilal over Premier League side Manchester City. Argentina, meanwhile, had an audience share of 87% tune in for River Plate’s clash with Mexican side Monterrey, while 84.2% of the audience fired up Boca Juniors’ group-stage contest against Benfica.