2018 Ratings Wrap: NFL Laps the Field, Again

In a year with an Olympics and World Cup, 80 percent of the top sports audiences in 2018 belonged to the NFL. [Click here to jump straight to the main list, here for the list with the NFL excluded, and here for a list of the most-watched events by sport and network.]

The NFL generated 40 of the top 50 U.S. sports audiences in 2018, the same as last year, and up from the previous Olympic/World Cup year in 2014 (37). Super Bowl 52 led the way with 103.39 million viewers, the smallest audience for the game since 2009, but still the tenth-largest audience in U.S. TV history.

The Alabama-Georgia college football national championship was the top non-NFL event, scoring a 15.6 rating and 28.44 million on the ESPN family of networks. That was followed by the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics on NBC (14.7, 27.84M).

College football and the Olympics were the only non-NFL events to crack the top 50. Outside of football and the Olympics, no sporting event in 2018 cracked 19 million viewers, with Game 2 of the NBA Finals coming closest (10.3, 18.47M).

2018 was the first year on record in which no sporting event outside of football and the Olympics cracked 19 million viewers. Even in other relatively lean years, at least one event would slip past the 19 million mark.

(All viewership figures for ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU include streaming viewership. For all other networks — including ABC — viewership only includes streaming if enclosed within parentheses.)

Top Sports Audiences of 2018

Top Sports Audiences of 2018, Excluding NFL/Olympics