Thursday Night Football hit a season-low, while the NCAA women’s volleyball semifinals set new viewership highs, on Thursday, December 14.
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football — the Raiders’ historically-lopsided rout of the Chargers — averaged 7.98 million viewers on Amazon Prime, marking the least-watched TNF game this season and the first to decline from the equivalent game last year. Viewership declined 23% from 49ers-Seahawks in Week 15 last year (10.31M).
TNF nonetheless finished as easily the most-watched television program of the night, as is typical for the NFL.
In other action Thursday, ESPN averaged 1.08 million viewers for the NCAA women’s volleyball semifinals — easily the highest average on record. In particular, Nebraska-Pittsburgh averaged 1.10 million viewers and Texas-Wisconsin 1.07 million — up 49 and 55 percent respectively from last year (Texas-San Diego State: 736K; Louisville-Pittsburgh: 692K).
Further down the dial, NBA TV averaged 449,000 for Warriors-Clippers and 324,000 for Cavaliers-Celtics in an NBA regular season doubleheader, up 59 and 25 percent respectively from last year (Clippers-Heat: 260K; Nuggets-Blazers: 283K).
College basketball topped out at 130,000 for Jacksonville State-Wisconsin on BTN, a game that was moved up an hour to accommodate the Badgers’ volleyball match later in the night.
Shohei Ohtani’s introductory press conference with the Los Angeles Dodgers averaged 48,000 viewers on MLB Network. ESPN’s SportsCenter, which also carried the press conference, averaged 487,000.
Thursday, December 14 sports ratings
Updated chart:
Original chart below:
