Despite a three-year high for Thursday’s opening round, NFL Draft viewership finished with a slight decline from last year.
The complete, three day NFL Draft averaged a combined 5.9 million viewers across ABC, the ESPN cable networks, NFL Network and digital platforms, per the league, down from 6.0 million last year. That average includes 5.75 million across the primary networks ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and NFL Network.
After a 3% percent increase for last Thursday’s opening round, Friday’s second and third round action declined 9% to 5.05 million and Saturday’s remaining rounds fell 3% to 3.00 million.
NFL Network bore the brunt of the declines. After a slight gain on Thursday, its viewership sank 20% on Friday (to 793K) and 15% on Saturday (to 498K), marking its least-watched Friday and Saturday of the Draft since at least 2012.
ESPN followed up a 1% dip on Thursday with declines of 15% Friday and 7% on Saturday. The Friday telecast aired entirely on ESPN2 to accommodate the NBA Playoffs and was the least-watched second night of the Draft on ESPN’s cable networks since the three-day format began in 2010.
ABC picked up the slack. While ESPN2 and NFL Network both declined double-digits on Friday, the broadcast network was down just a fraction of a percent. On Saturday, it bucked the trend of declines with a 6% increase.
As usual, the NFL Draft towers above all other comparable events. Last year’s NBA Draft averaged 3.7 million on ESPN and ABC, this month’s WNBA Draft drew 2.45 million on ESPN, and no other Draft in the past year has reached the million viewer mark.
