Although Germany won the game, and the U.S. still advanced, ESPN came out as the big winner of Thursday's major soccer match.
ESPN, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co, logged an all-time best 3.2 million live unique visitors to its streaming service WatchESPN during the World Cup game Thursday, a spokeswoman told CNBC. The network also saw a 10 percent lift to the TV audience, she said.
The game also generated WatchESPN's best figures for concurrent viewers (1.7 million) and total live minutes watched for one event (143 million), the spokeswoman said. ESPN.com also saw its best-ever day, logging 19.5 million unique visitors, she added.
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WatchESPN during the game because of the heavy traffic.
So far in the tournament, WatchESPN is averaging 737,000 unique viewers and 31.1 million total minutes per match, she said.
—By CNBC's Everett Rosenfeld