BRISTOL: David Beckham's Major League Soccer debut for the Los Angeles Galaxy drew a record 1.5 million television viewers for an MLS game, ESPN said.
The Galaxy fell 1-0 to DC United, with Beckham coming on as a 72nd-minute substitute.
ESPN News said on Friday that the figures outstripped the previous record - 1,092,000 which saw DC United against San Jose in 1996.
Beckham, the 32-year-old former England captain who has arrived in the States to great fanfare, had missed four Galaxy games with an ankle injury.
Until Thursday, he had made just one brief appearance in a friendly for the Galaxy, and hadn't even trained fully with his new teammates.
A sell-out crowd of 46,686 at Washington's RFK Stadium saw Beckham make some precise passes, although he was unable to change the course of the game.
