The World Cup is almost into the second round but the real competition might be taking place behind the cameras, between the broadcasters. In the U.S., two companies have television broadcast rights: Disney (ABC and ESPN) has the English-language rights and Univision (Univision, Telefutura and Galavision) has the Spanish-language rights.

It was expected that Unvision would do well in the ratings since their Latino audience is generally regarded as being more fanatical about soccer than the “gringo” viewers of ABC or even ESPN audience. This proved to be the case during the inaugural match when Univision drew 5.6 million viewers, almost double the audience of ESPN. However, Univision did not beat ESPN during any of the following seven matches, and got especially trounced during the England versus USA match which was attracted 10.8 million viewers on ABC; the largest audience for any U.S. World Cup match since 1994 .

The strong ratings for Univision and ESPN demonstrate both the strength of Univision (to compete effectively in sports against ESPN) and the growing attraction for soccer in the U.S. (since the ABC ratings have surprised most media pundits). It’s been difficult to get information for later telecasts but Univision did issue a press release for the Mexico versus France match noting that their audience of 5.8 million was double ESPN2′s and the most watched game to date for Univision during the 2010 World Cup. Odds are strong that this record will be broken by this Sunday when Argentina plays Mexico in a second-round match at 2:30 p.m. This is also likely to be another “victoria” for Univision against ESPN.