Ratings roundup — the F1 Monaco Grand Prix scored its largest audience yet. Plus, NASCAR hit a Monday high on Memorial Day; a quiet end to the Premier League season; and more, including a 16-year high for the NCAA men’s lacrosse final.
F1 Monaco GP hits high in return to broadcast
Last Sunday’s Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix averaged a 1.0 rating and 1.79 million viewers on ABC, the largest live audience ever for the race and third-largest of any F1 race. Including tape-delayed races, it ranks second at Monaco and fourth overall.
The three largest live F1 audiences on record — and five of the top six — have come in the past two seasons, with Sunday’s race trailing the two Miami Grands Prix (2.58M and 1.96M).
Max Verstappen’s win, which peaked with 1.9 million from 10:15-10:30 AM ET, increased a tick in ratings and 12% in viewership from last year on ESPN (0.9, 1.61M). An afternoon replay averaged a 0.30 (-33%) and 564,000 (-26%) on ABC; qualifying the previous day drew a 0.46 and 818,000 (+3%) on ESPN.
This year’s Monaco GP was the first to air live on broadcast TV since NBC last aired F1 in 2017.
NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 hits Monday high, with Memorial Day caveat
Monday’s rain-delayed NASCAR Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 averaged 3.4 million viewers on FOX, the largest audience for a Monday Cup Series race — excluding the Daytona 500 — since Texas in 2014 (3.8M). Keep in mind Monday was a national holiday. The last time the 600 was run on Memorial Day, 2009, it averaged 5.3 million.
Viewership declined just 12% from last year’s race, which aired as scheduled in the usual Sunday evening timeslot (3.9M).
EPL Championship Sunday sinks sans-NBC; Liga MX final up big
With just four matches on linear television and none on NBC, Premier League Championship Sunday combined to average 820,000 viewers across USA (Bournemouth-Everton: 465K), Bravo (Fulham-Manchester U: 150K), CNBC (Tottenham-Leeds: 110K) and SyFy (West Ham-Leicester City: 95K), with that figure rising to 1.1 million including Peacock. NBC alone averaged 817,000 viewers on Championship Sunday last year.
Despite the quiet finish, the full EPL season averaged 527,000 viewers per window — up 3% from last year (510K) and the second-most watched season ever on U.S. television.
In other season-ending soccer action, the second leg of the Liga MX Clasura final (Guaralajara-Tigres) averaged a 1.0 rating and 2.94 million viewers on Telemundo Sunday night — a 32% increase in viewership over last year’s final on Univision (2.2M) and the largest audience of the year for a sporting event on Spanish-language television.
The first leg aired on Univision and averaged a 0.9 and 1.96 million last Thursday night.
Plus: Lacrosse, softball, golf, baseball
- Monday’s Notre Dame-Duke NCAA men’s lacrosse national championship averaged 757,000 viewers on ESPN, up 36% from Cornell-Maryland last year (556K) and the largest audience for the event since 2007. The full tournament increased 32%. The previous day’s Northwestern-Boston College women’s final drew 316,000 on ESPN, down 26% from North Carolina-Boston College a year ago (428K).
- The NCAA softball super regionals averaged 506,000 viewers across the ESPN networks, up 24% from last year. Last Saturday’s extra-inning Oklahoma-Clemson Game 2 topped the charts with a 0.54 rating and 886,000 viewers on ESPN, up from Virginia Tech-Florida (0.42, 704K) and Oklahoma-UCF (0.49, 861K) in a similar four-hour window last year. The Sooners’ win fully overlapped with Tennessee-Texas Game 2 on ABC (0.44, 747K), with the networks combining for 1.7 million during that two-hour period.
- CBS coverage of the PGA Tour at Colonial averaged a 0.8 rating and 1.41 million viewers last Saturday and a 1.1 and 1.85 million last Sunday, marking the least-watched third and final rounds of the tournament since 2014. Ratings and viewership fell double-digits from last year. Sunday coverage aired opposite the final round of the Senior PGA Championship on NBC, which at a 0.8 and 1.41 million was the most-watched since 2005 (1.47M).
- Regional Major League Baseball action on FOX averaged a 1.0 rating and 1.8 million viewers last Saturday night, down a tick in ratings and 8% in viewership from last year (1.1, 1.96M). The following night, Phillies-Braves scored a 0.8 and 1.47 million on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, unsurprisingly up 45% and 48% respectively from Phillies-Mets on ESPN2 opposite an NBA conference final Game 7 last year (0.53, 994K).
(Nielsen estimates from network PR, ShowBuzz Daily 6.1)
