Wining and dining
While cynics among us may shrug off the day as a pretty transparent cash-grab from major brands, businesses, and the Big Card industry, it seems that there’s still a glimmer of romance on Valentine’s Day for many Americans: 34% of US couples are planning to dine out to celebrate today, while 25% are celebrating with a meal at home, according to a YouGov survey.
Note: not-sures, non-celebrators, and prefer-not-to-says are not included.
Between a top-spot finish in the group stage, a sweeping performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32, and the president’s controversial intervention, Monday evening’s USMNT game against Belgium had, to put it lightly, shaped up into a box-office clash.
And though the US players’ performance on the pitch might not have lived up to the high drama off it, American soccer fans certainly showed up. According to early estimates, the 4-1 defeat against Belgium was the most watched soccer telecast in US history, hauling some 40 million viewers on average across the coverage on Fox and Telemundo.
That may be a record tally in the US for the sport that much of the world calls some variant of “football” — besting the 36.2 million who tuned in to watch the team’s previous knock-out match — but it’s still peanuts in comparison to the sport that shares the same name in the States.
The platform will plow more money into its ad offerings as it cements itself as a “trove of human intelligence.”
