Wednesday's semifinal match between Spain and Portugal drew the largest audience ever on ESPN for the semifinals of the European Championship -- 1.952 million viewers, based on a 0.7 rating.

Sunday's Euro 2012 quarterfinal between Italy and England drew the highest rating yet on ESPN: a 2.4 overnight rating. That's an increase of 50 percent from the Spain-Italy game at the same stage four years.

Through eight matches, ESPN is averaging 1,260,000 viewers for Euro 2012. That's an increase of  183 percent compared to the first eight games of Euro 2008 (446,000 viewers).

There seems to be no stopping the growth of the U.S. viewership for international soccer.

Fox Soccer Report helped put Winnipeg on the soccer media map with the production of the nightly news show done each night from a tiny studio of the corner of the 30th floor of the CanWest Plaza, one of the tallest buildings in Canada.