Friday belonged to pro and college basketball as the NBA and NCAA delivered the top sports audiences of the day.
Friday’s Grizzlies-Lakers NBA regular season game was the most-watched live sporting event of the day with an average of 1.72 million viewers on ESPN, up 55% from Heat-Suns on the same January night last season (1.11M). (There were no games on the equivalent date of last season, December 29.) Earlier in the night, the Knicks’ rout of the Sixers averaged 1.55 million across ESPN (1.45M) and a Kevin Hart-fronted alternate presentation on ESPN2 (97K), up 17% from Nets-Pelicans a year ago (1.33M).
Pro and college basketball dominated Friday night, with the latter topping out at 904,000 for Illinois-Purdue on FS1 — easily the most-watched college basketball game on that network this season. UConn-Butler led-in with 503,000. Big Ten Network averaged 315,000 for an Iowa-Rutgers women’s game, a season-high for a women’s game on that network.
There was little else of note in the live sports department, with the second round of golf’s season-opening Tournament of Champions averaging 291,000 — down 27% from last year’s 398,000. A tennis match involving Coco Gauff pulled 120,000 on Tennis Channel. Not making the below chart, a Cornell-Ohio State wrestling meet averaged just 66,000 on BTN — losing nearly 80 percent of its lead-in from the aforementioned Iowa-Rutgers game — while a concurrent Oklahoma State-NC State meet on ESPNU averaged 34,000.
Friday, January 5 sports ratings
Original chart below:
