NASCAR’s Duel at Daytona delivered the largest sports audience of the day of Thursday, February 15.
The NASCAR Duel at Daytona averaged 1.64 million viewers on FS1 Thursday night, an increase of 7% over last year (1.54M) and the largest audience for the event since 2019 (1.73M). The telecast delivered the top sports audience of the day. A Truck Series practice led-in with 228,000.
Placing second, a Bucks-Grizzlies NBA regular season game averaged a combined 1.14 million across TNT (1.04M) and truTV (95K) — up 6% from Bucks-Bulls on TNT alone last year (1.07M). (Compared to Bulls-Nets on the equivalent date of last season — February 9 — viewership declined 5% from 1.20 million.)
Shifting to the college game, ESPN averaged 705,000 for a South Carolina-Tennessee women’s matchup — up 98% from Louisville-Notre Dame last year (356K). The Colorado-UCLA men’s game that followed lost more than half of the lead-in with 308,000. ESPN2 chipped in 125,000 for Stanford-Washington (-74%) and 110,000 for Temple-FAU (-44%).
BTN drew 586,000 for a Minnesota-Purdue men’s matchup, up 247% from a Michigan-Indiana women’s game last year (169K). Northwestern-Rutgers led in with 254,000, down 32% from Purdue-Maryland a year ago (373K). On FS1, Utah-USC followed NASCAR with 189,000 — up 48% from Utah-USC last year (189K).
Further down the dial, opening round coverage of the PGA Tour at Riviera — featuring Tiger Woods’ return to competitive golf — averaged 450,000, down a whopping 51% from last year (907K).
Thursday, February 15 sports ratings
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Original chart below:
