The opening round of the Masters hit a nine-year high and topped the sports viewership charts for Thursday, April 11.
Thursday’s opening round of the Masters averaged 3.17 million viewers on ESPN, up 26% from last year and the largest opening round audience for the event in nine years. For more details on the numbers, see the preceding link. The Masters delivered the top sports audience of the day a wide margin.
Ranking a distant second, a Knicks-Celtics NBA regular season game averaged a combined 1.39 million across TNT (1.29M) and truTV (57K), followed by Pelicans-Kings at 1.28 million (TNT: 1.22M; truTV: 61K). The same night last year coincided with the NBA Play-in Tournament. Compared to the final Thursday of last year’s regular season (April 6), viewership increased 34 and 16 percent respectively from Heat-Sixers (1.04M) and Nuggets-Suns (1.10M)
Masters shoulder programming rounded out the top five, with a primetime encore averaging 939,000 (+30%) and an early afternoon lead-in drawing 594,000 (-22%).
Further down the dial, the NCAA men’s hockey national semifinals averaged 294,000 viewers on ESPN2 — down 17% from last year (355K). Boston College-Michigan averaged 373,000 (-14%) and Denver-Boston University 232,000 (-17%).
Rounding out the live sports action, MLB Network drew 199,000 for primetime coverage featuring Red Sox-Orioles and 140,000 for Mets-Braves earlier in the day.
Thursday, April 11 sports ratings
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