A marquee main event delivered one of boxing’s top audiences of late.
The latest edition of ESPN Top Rank Boxing averaged a 0.8 rating and 1.53 million viewers last Saturday night, marking the largest boxing audience on any network since a Premier Boxing Champions card on FOX last December (1.65M). Numbers include the four-plus hours of prelims before the main event.
According to Boxing Scene, the Teofimo Lopez-Vasiliy Lomachenko main event averaged 2.73 million — marking the sport’s most-watched main event since the Jeff Horn-Manny Pacquiao bout that opened ESPN’s Top Rank deal in 2017 (2.81M).
Per The Ring, the main event generated an additional streaming audience of “close to 1.5 million” on the ESPN app and the ESPN+ subscription service. It was not clear whether that was the total number of streams or the average minute audience.
Notably, the full five-hour telecast averaged a larger audience than any UFC event on ESPN’s linear networks, including the debut card in February of last year (1.46M). Keep in mind that UFC tends to reserve its highest-profile bouts for pay-per-view.
Top Rank had been plumbing the depths since its return from hiatus in June. Prior to last week, no event had averaged even 500,000 viewers since the series resumed.
As one would expect, Saturday’s telecast was no match for the competing MLB ALCS Game 7 on TBS (Astros-Rays: 2.3, 4.50M) or the Georgia-Alabama college football game on CBS (5.3, 9.61M).
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 10.20, Boxing Scene 10.20, The Ring 10.20]
