Viewership for the English Premier League was the lowest in four years.
The 2016-17 English Premier League season averaged 420,000 viewers per window across the NBC family of networks, down 18% from last year (514K), down 12% from 2014-15 (479K) and the smallest average since the EPL moved to NBC in 2013. The league averaged 220,000 viewers in its final year on Fox Sports and ESPN in 2012-13.
EPL Championship Sunday combined for 1.8 million viewers across ten NBC networks last weekend, a figure that includes abbreviated coverage of Hull City-Tottenham on MSNBC, which was mostly preempted by other programming. That marks a 4% decline from coverage on the same ten networks last year (1.9M) and a fraction of a percent drop from 2015 (1.82M to 1.81M). Excluding the MSNBC window, it had 1.55 million (-6%).
NBC’s Arsenal-Everton match was the top draw of Championship Sunday with a 0.5 rating and 787,000 viewers — down a tick in ratings and 1% in viewership from Swansea-Manchester City last year (0.6, 797K) and down a tick and 19% respectively from Hull City-Manchester United in ’15 (0.6, 966K).
Liverpool-Middlesbrough placed second with 298,000 on NBCSN, up 61% from Sunderland-Chelsea in ’15 (185K). The network’s match last year was postponed.
* A previous version of this post reported that the EPL averaged fewer than 380,000 viewers across the NBC networks. That was a per match average. It is NBC’s practice to release averages on a per-window basis, grossing the total for the 10 AM windows on NBCSN and CNBC.
[EPL Champ. Sunday figures from Awful Announcing 5.27]
