The final match of Serena Williams’ career delivered the sport’s largest audience in years.
Serena Williams’ third round US Open loss to Ajla Tomljanovic, believed to be the final match of her career, averaged 4.8 million viewers on ESPN Friday night — the most-watched tennis match on any network since she faced her sister Venus Williams in a 2015 US Open quarterfinal (6.00M). The previous high was 4.00 million for Williams’ loss in the 2019 final to Bianca Andreescu.
Friday’s audience, which peaked at 6.9 million in the final quarter-hour, exceeded every Grand Slam singles final since Williams’ 2013 US Open win over Victoria Azarenka on CBS (6.17M). The last Grand Slam final to average a larger audience without Williams involved was the 2009 Roger Federer-Andy Roddick Wimbledon men’s final on NBC (5.71M).
The full ESPN telecast averaged 4.56 million, making it the most-watched tennis window ever on the network. The previous high was 3.9 million for the 2012 Roger Federer-Andy Murray Wimbledon men’s final. (While the 2015 Serena-Venus quarterfinal averaged 6.0 million viewers, the full telecast window averaged 3.3 million.)
It was Friday’s television’s most-watched show on any network and led the way in each of the key young adult demographics. In a rarity, it also topped every cable news show in adults 50+, a demographic in which cable news is disproportionately strong.
The ESPN figure does not include the second half of the night session — Daniil Medvedev-Yibing Wu on ESPN2 — which averaged just 556,000 viewers. Across both networks, the night session averaged 2.97 million across ESPN and ESPN2, still among the five most-watched US Open telecasts ever on ESPN.
US Open coverage was averaging 1.1 million viewers through Friday, up 101% from last year and easily a record at this point of the event.
Overall, Williams played four primetime matches in this year’s US Open — three singles and one doubles with her sister Venus. All four matches averaged at least two million viewers — 2.2 million for the doubles match, 2.7 million for her first round win over Danka Kovinic and 3.6 million for her second round win over Anett Kontaveit.
Williams’ final match bumped a previously scheduled Western Michigan-Michigan State college football game from ESPN to ESPN2. It more-than-tripled the football game, which averaged 1.35 million.
Compared to other memorable athlete farewells, Williams’ final match averaged more viewers than the final NBA games of Kobe Bryant (2016 Jazz-Lakers: 3.5M) and Michael Jordan (2003 Wizards-Sixers: 1.5M) — with the caveat that Kobe’s final game aired on ESPN2 against competing NBA action and that both games featured subpar teams out of the playoff race.
In tennis, Pete Sampras’ final match was a stronger draw with 9.36 million viewers — but that was a US Open final against his chief rival Andre Agassi. A more apples-to-apples comparison is Agassi’s final match in 2006, also in the third round of the US Open, but viewership for that telecast was not immediately available.
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN, ShowBuzz Daily 9.6)
