A three-set match featuring an American lifted the Australian Open women’s final to a viewership bump. Plus: the latest numbers for TGL and Unrivaled; Tennessee-Auburn scored one of the season’s top men’s college basketball audiences.
American keys three-year high for Australian Open women’s final
Saturday’s Madison Keys-Aryna Sabalenka Australian Open women’s final averaged 452,000 viewers on ESPN, up 34% from last year (Aryna Sabalenka-Qinwen Zheng: 388K) and the most-watched women’s final of the tournament since 2022, the previous year it featured an American (Ashleigh Barty-Danielle Collins: 482K).
The women’s semifinals — Keys-Iga Swiatek and Sabalenka-Paula Badosa — averaged 357,000, up 13% from last year and the most-watched since 2021.
Figures for the men’s final were not immediately available.
Woods-McIlroy matchup lifts TGL in week four
The latest edition of TGL, pitting Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links team against Rory McIlroy and Boston, averaged 864,000 viewers on ESPN — up from the previous edition six days earlier (682K), but below the previous edition to feature Woods two weeks ago (1.0M).
The telecast peaked with 1.1 million in the final quarter-hour, when coverage leaked into the timeslot set aside of the NC State-Duke men’s college basketball game.
TGL is now averaging 874,000 viewers through four weeks.
Unrivaled sees expected dip in week two
The new women’s basketball league Unrivaled is averaging 194,000 viewers across TNT and truTV through two weeks, with that average rising to 238,000 when truTV-exclusive games are excluded.
Coverage on Monday night averaged 166,000 on TNT/truTV (Laces-Rose: 192K; Lunar Owls/Vinyl: 134K), down 10% from the prior Monday window — which had a lead-in from an NBA Martin Luther King Day doubleheader, but also faced tougher competition from the CFP National Championship and Inauguration Day (184K).
Saturday coverage averaged 98,000 on truTV alone (Lunar Owls-Phantom: 118K; Mist-Rose: 76K), on par with the prior week (100K).
Going back to last Friday, coverage on TNT/truTV averaged 281,000 (Vinyl-Laces: 289K; Mist-Phantom: 274K) — down 10% from the prior week, with the obvious caveat that it was the debut telecast (313K). The two Friday windows account for the league’s four most-watched games.
Tennessee-Auburn up big, among season’s top games
Saturday’s Tennessee-Auburn men’s college basketball game averaged 1.7 million viewers on ESPN, more than doubling LSU-Alabama in the same window last year (764K) and the fifth-largest audience of the college basketball season. The Houston-Kansas lead-in also had 1.7 million, up from Kentucky-Arkansas last year (1.5M) and the seventh-largest audience of the season.
Earlier in the day, Duke-Wake Forest averaged 1.3 million — on par with Clemson-Duke a year ago. Kentucky-Vanderbilt preceded with 1.2 million, up from last year’s equivalent North Carolina-Florida State game (1.1M).
