NASCAR’s inaugural street race from Chicago topped the sports ratings charts in the week of June 26-July 1.
Starting this week, Sports Media Watch will (at least for now) present the weekly sports ratings in a similar format to that of the “Skedball” posts that were a staple of the Mitch Metcalf and Mitch Salem website ShowBuzz Daily. (The format is slightly different, as the events are broken down by day rather than sport, but that is subject to change.)
NASCAR was the most-watched sports program of the week with an audience of 4.62 million for NBC’s coverage of Sunday’s Chicago Street Race. On a light week in sports TV, the June 26 LSU-Florida Men’s College World Series finale ranked second among sporting events (3.43M on ESPN), followed by tape-delayed final round coverage of the PGA Tour event in Detroit (2.45M on CBS).
Not counting shoulder programming, only 16 sporting events during the week averaged at least one million viewers. Among them was the USFL Championship Game on Saturday night, which averaged 1.16 million on NBC.
For those curious how the WNBA’s new Friday night window on ION has been faring, last week’s edition averaged 317,000 — ahead of the league’s games on NBA TV, but behind ABC’s two weekend matchups.
The week’s top sports program in 18-49 was the LSU-Florida MCWS final, which scored a 0.85 in the demo on ESPN. The Gold Cup took top honors in 18-34 with a 0.66 for Univision’s coverage of Mexico-Qatar on Sunday.
Weekly sports ratings, June 26-July 1
