Past the halfway point of 2017, here is a look at the year’s most-watched events so far.
Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire
The NFL owns the ten largest sports audiences of the year, led as usual by the Super Bowl. In a rarity, neither the AFC nor NFC title games took second-place. That distinction belongs to Packers-Cowboys in the Divisional Round, which had 48.5 million viewers.
Sporting Events in the Top 50Outside of the NFL, the Clemson-Alabama college football national championship earned the largest audience of the first half, ranking 11th overall with 25.3 million viewers. Not far behind, the clinching game of the NBA Finals clocked in at 24.5 million viewers (#13) and the North Carolina-Gonzaga men’s basketball championship had 23.0 million (#15).
Further down, the Kentucky Derby ranks 24th (16.4M), the Daytona 500 29th (11.9M), final round of The Masters 30th (11.1M) and MLB All-Star Game 38th (9.2M). The clinching game of the Stanley Cup Final made the list at #50, the first time since this feature started in 2009 that any top 50 event had fewer than 7.0 million viewers (6.985M). This time last year, the 50th ranked event had 8.1 million — and the Olympics were yet to come.
MOST-WATCHED SPORTING EVENTS OF 2017 Through July 12; does not include streaming SportsMediaWatch.com
Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.
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