With no other sporting events going on, NFL Draft viewership surged to a record-high.
Thursday’s opening round of the NFL Draft averaged 15.6 million viewers across the ESPN family of networks, NFL Network and digital platforms, per Nielsen fast-nationals — the largest audience ever for the event. The previous high was 12.37 million for first round coverage in 2014, when the much-hyped Johnny Manziel went 22nd overall.
The telecast, which peaked with 19.6 million viewers from 8:45-9 PM ET, increased 37% from both last year and 2018 (11.4M). Coverage aired on ESPN, ESPN2, NFL Network and FOX in 2018.
Columbus, Ohio, led all markets with a 16.7 rating, followed by Cleveland (15.9) and Cincinnati (15.6). The Bengals had the #1 overall pick and drafted LSU’s Joe Burrow. Philadelphia (15.1) and Kansas City (14.3) rounded out the top five.
Round one ranks as the most-watched sporting event on any network since the Super Bowl, with the caveat that there was no NCAA Tournament this year. It averaged a larger audience than every non-football sporting event since last year’s World Series Game 7 (23.01M).
The record audience was no doubt aided by the lack of competing sporting events. Typically, the draft has to compete with NBA and NHL playoff games. On night one of last year’s draft, a Nuggets-Spurs NBA playoff game averaged 1.80 million on TNT and a Blue Jackets-Bruins Stanley Cup game averaged 1.57 million on NBCSN. That is to say nothing of the usual slate of Major League Baseball games on regional sports networks.
As one would have expected, the NFL Draft easily eclipsed last Sunday’s premiere of “The Last Dance” (6.1M) as the most-watched sportscast during sports’ pandemic hiatus.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the three-day NFL Draft format. In year one of the arrangement back in 2010, the opening round averaged a combined 8.3 million across ESPN and NFL Network.
[Nielsen estimates from NFL PR 4.24]
