Past the halfway point of 2017, here is a look at the year’s most-watched events so far.
Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire
The NFL owns the ten largest sports audiences of the year, led as usual by the Super Bowl. In a rarity, neither the AFC nor NFC title games took second-place. That distinction belongs to Packers-Cowboys in the Divisional Round, which had 48.5 million viewers.
Sporting Events in the Top 50Outside of the NFL, the Clemson-Alabama college football national championship earned the largest audience of the first half, ranking 11th overall with 25.3 million viewers. Not far behind, the clinching game of the NBA Finals clocked in at 24.5 million viewers (#13) and the North Carolina-Gonzaga men’s basketball championship had 23.0 million (#15).
Further down, the Kentucky Derby ranks 24th (16.4M), the Daytona 500 29th (11.9M), final round of The Masters 30th (11.1M) and MLB All-Star Game 38th (9.2M). The clinching game of the Stanley Cup Final made the list at #50, the first time since this feature started in 2009 that any top 50 event had fewer than 7.0 million viewers (6.985M). This time last year, the 50th ranked event had 8.1 million — and the Olympics were yet to come.
MOST-WATCHED SPORTING EVENTS OF 2017 Through July 12; does not include streaming SportsMediaWatch.com
Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.
The SMX World Championship Series, including the indoor AMA Supercross Championship and outdoor Pro Motocross Championship, averaged 614,000 viewers on NBC across a Nielsen-measured linear audience and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics — up 17% from last year.
Nielsen has reprocessed the viewership for NBC’s four NFL games from Week 1-3 of the season. The Patriots-Seahawks Kickoff Game has been updated to 25.2 million, up from an originally-reported 25.1 million. The Week 1 Cowboys-Giants “Sunday Night Football” game has been updated to 25.82 million, up from 25.66 million. Colts-Chiefs the following week has been updated to 24.43 million, up from 24.29 million. Finally, Rams-Broncos in Week 3 has been updated to 20.96 million, up from 20.77 million.
Last Wednesday’s Liberty-Dream WNBA semifinal Game 2 averaged 1.4 million viewers on ESPN, down from Mercury-Lynx in the comparable window last year (1.5M). Last year’s games took place earlier in the calendar and did not face the MLB Postseason. Read more
The MLB American League Division Series was averaging 3.4 million viewers on TNT Sports through Thursday, up 2% from last year’s ALDS on Fox Sports. Last Thursday’s Guardians-White Sox Game 4 averaged 3.8 million opposite NFL “Thursday Night Football,” on par with Brewers-Cubs in the same window last year. Read more
Final round coverage of golf’s Presidents Cup averaged 2.0 million viewers on NBC last Sunday across a Nielsen-measured linear audience (1.1 rating, 1.88M viewers) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics — up 37% from the previous edition two years ago and the highest since 2017 (four telecasts).
NASCAR last week resumed reporting the official Nielsen “Big Data + Panel” ratings and viewership figures for its races, a move that coincides with Nielsen having rolled out a modified version of the methodology at the end of last month. The first race following that decision, Darlington over Labor Day weekend, averaged a 1.0 rating and 1.98 million viewers on USA Network — up 6% and 5% respectively from last year (1.0, 1.9M). Read more
NASCAR Cup Series racing from Daytona averaged a 1.7 rating and 3.12 million viewers on NBC a week ago Saturday, per the “Big Data + Panel” methodology that is the official Nielsen currency, and a 1.8 and 3.51 million under the old “panel-only” metric NASCAR now publicizes for its races. Read more
