A strong Week 6 in the NFL included a multi-year high on FOX; Top Rank Boxing scored a big audience; USMNT on Univision beat college football on ESPN.
NFL Ratings: Singleheader Up on FOX
The Week 6 NFL singleheader window, featuring Carolina-Washington or Rams-Broncos in 61% of markets, earned a 10.0 rating and 17.29 million viewers on FOX — up 6% in ratings and 7% in viewership from last year (ft. Packers-Vikings: 9.4, 16.2M). Compared to 2016 on CBS, ratings fell 2% (from 10.2) but viewership increased 1% (from 17.2M).
It was the most-watched Week 6 singleheader since 2015 (17.9M), giving the NFL four multi-year highs in Week 6. Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football also hit highs. The full list of Week 6 NFL ratings is available here.
The singleheader has scored a double-digit rating three times this season (all on FOX), exceeding last year’s full-season total (two).
Top Rank Scores Biggest ESPN Audience Since Debut
ESPN’s Top Rank Boxing, featuring the Terence Crawford-Jose Benavidez Jr. main event, delivered a 1.35 rating and 2.25 million viewers Saturday night — marking the largest audience for any boxing or UFC event on linear television since ESPN’s inaugural Top Rank card in July 2017 (Jeff Horn-Manny Pacquiao: 1.6, 2.81M).
The Top Rank event easily outdrew competing college football games on FS1 (Colorado-USC: 0.7, 1.18M) and ESPN2 (Hawaii-BYU: 0.38, 646K). It benefited from a college football lead-in, airing immediately after ESPN’s Missouri-Alabama game (2.05, 3.76M).
USMNT Draws Big Univision Audience
Last Thursday’s United States-Colombia men’s soccer friendly earned 1.29 million viewers on Univision, the third-largest USMNT audience on the Univision family of networks this year. The match outdrew the competing Texas Tech-TCU college football game on ESPN (1.2M). English-language coverage of the same match had just 280,000 on FS1.
Later in the night, Mexico-Costa Rica scored 1.84 million.
[Numbers from Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 10.16, Univision]
