The WNBA scored its largest regular season audience in eight years on Saturday. Plus: a racing ratings roundup, another rough outing for “Hard Knocks,” and more.
WNBA posts largest regular season audience in eight years
Sunday’s Wings-Mercury WNBA regular season game averaged a 0.43 rating and 599,000 viewers on ABC, marking the league’s largest regular season audience on any network since 2012. The previous high was 565,000 for a Sparks-Lynx game on ABC last season.
In the second half of ABC’s first-ever WNBA doubleheader, the network also averaged a 0.35 and 480,000 for Seattle-Connecticut. So far this season, six WNBA games have averaged at least 400,000 viewers (five on ABC and one on ESPN), more than all of last season (four, including the All-Star Game).
Despite a combined 15 games on ESPN or ABC this season — triple last season’s five — WNBA viewership across the ESPN family of networks is down 14% from last year to 211,000. While there have been more games on the primary ESPN networks, there have also been more on ESPN2 (14, up from last year’s full-season total of 11).
Racing roundup: Indy 500 qualifiers down
Indianapolis 500 qualifying on NBC averaged a 0.6 rating and 933,000 viewers Saturday and a 0.5 and 824,000 Sunday, both down from 2018 on ABC, the last time qualifying aired as scheduled (Saturday: 0.7, 1.05M; Sunday: 0.9, 1.33M). Compared to last year, when NBC did not air any live coverage due to rain, viewership increased 26% from 695,000.
In other racing action, Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series road race averaged a 0.6 and 1.03 million on NBCSN — up 37% in ratings and 45% in viewership from last year’s second Daytona race, which aired over July 4 weekend (0.46, 707K).
The F1 Spanish Grand Prix averaged a 0.38 and 618,000 on ESPN Sunday morning, down 5% in ratings and 4% in viewership from last year (0.40, 645K). It was the first F1 race all season to decline.
Rounding out the racing action, NBC averaged a 0.37 and 517,000 for the season premiere of the Pro Motocross Championship series Sunday afternoon.
Hard knock life for “Hard Knocks”
The latest edition of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” averaged just 251,000 viewers Tuesday night, down 8% from the previous week’s season premiere (273K) and down two-thirds from last year’s second episode (733K).
Prior to this year, the previous ten “Hard Knocks” premieres — dating back to 2017 — had topped 500,000 viewer mark.
Plus: Inside the NBA, Boston sports, Breeders Cup Challenge
Airing immediately following Tuesday’s Blazers-Lakers NBA playoff game, TNT’s Inside the NBA averaged 1.42 million viewers — up 12% from the first playoff edition last year (1.27M) and the network’s most-watched postgame show since the end of last year’s conference finals (3.51M). … On a night when three of Boston’s four major pro sports teams were in action, the Bruins came out ahead with an approximate 7.8 rating (6.2 on NESN + 1.6 on NBCSN), followed by the Celtics at a 6.6 (3.5 on NBC Sports Boston + 3.1 on ESPN), with the Red Sox a distant third (1.5 on NESN Plus prior to a rain delay), according to the Boston Globe. … Coverage of the Breeders Cup Challenge Alabama Stakes averaged a 0.52 rating and 785,000 on NBC Saturday evening, up from the previous week’s Travers Stakes on FOX (0.43, 605K).
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 8.18, 8.19; ESPN; Boston Globe 8.18]
