For the second-straight night, the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament delivered a viewership milestone. Also: a Disney Channel simulcast boosted NHL viewership on ESPN; the World Baseball Classic neared a tournament-high on FS1; and more, including a season-low for the XFL.
Men’s tournament scores largest first round audience on record
Friday coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament averaged a combined 9.3 million viewers per window across CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV, per Nielsen fast-nationals — the largest audience on record for the opening Friday of play. Figures include the March Madness Live streaming platform.
The complete first round of the tournament averaged a combined 9.2 million per window, also the highest on record.
NHL’s Disney simulcast among top games on cable this season
Tuesday’s Capitals-Rangers NHL regular season game averaged 765,000 viewers across ESPN (589K) and a special simulcast on Disney and Disney XD in which the players were animated to resemble characters from the children’s show “Big City Greens” (176K).
The combined audience is the third-largest of the NHL season on cable, trailing only the Winter Classic (1.78M) and Rangers-Penguins last Sunday (807K), both of which aired on TNT.
On TNT Wednesday night, Wild-Blues drew 348,000 viewers and Avalanche-Maple Leafs 318,000 — up 65% and down 36% respectively compared to last year’s equivalent games (Lightning-Kraken: 211K; Bruins-Wild: 499K).
World Baseball Classic nears tournament highs on FS1
Wednesday’s United States-Colombia World Baseball Classic game averaged 981,000 viewers on FS1, up 39% from the fourth U.S. game of the previous WBC six years ago — which aired on MLB Network (706K) — and the second-largest audience of the tournament. Last week’s Great Britain-United States game averaged 1.48 million on the FOX broadcast network.
By comparison, the largest regular season Major League Baseball audience ever on FS1 is 980,000 for a 2018 Rays-Yankees game. (Because out-of-home viewing was not included in the 2018 figures, it is safe to assume that game had a larger audience all things being equal.)
The Puerto Rico-Dominican Republic lead-in averaged 949,000, the largest audience for a non-U.S. WBC game thus far and third-largest audience of the tournament overall.
Plus: Midweek NBA, XFL season low, NHRA opener
Wednesday’s Warriors-Clippers NBA regular season game averaged 1.73 million viewers on ESPN, up 8% from a Celtics-Warriors NBA Finals preview last year (1.60M). The Sixers-Cavaliers lead-in averaged 1.22 million, down 2% from Mavericks-Nets a year ago (1.25M). … Thursday’s Houston-Seattle XFL regular season game averaged 256,000 viewers on ESPN, the smallest XFL audience of the season on any network. The 10:30 PM ET start was the latest of any XFL game thus far. The game was originally scheduled to air on FX at 9 PM ET. … Last weekend’s NHRA season opener from Gainseville (Fla.) averaged a 0.58 rating and 945,000 viewers on the FOX broadcast network, up 16% from the series’ average on the network last season (818K). Last year’s opener from Pomona took place a month earlier, was tape delayed and aired on FS1, averaging just 235,000.
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily, network PR)
