ESPN’s “The Last Dance” remains a viewership oasis in the pandemic desert, though the audience continues to slip by the week.
Episodes 7 and 8 of the ESPN documentary series “The Last Dance” — about the final year of the Michael Jordan-led 1990s Chicago Bulls — averaged 5.1 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN2 Sunday night, down 7% from the previous week’s episodes (5.5M) and down 14% from two weeks ago (5.9M).
In particular, episode seven averaged 5.3 million viewers and episode eight 4.9 million, the latter becoming the first episode to debut with fewer than five million.
The series is now averaging 5.6 million viewers in its initial airings. By comparison, last year’s NBA Eastern Conference Finals (Raptors-Bucks) averaged 5.7 million on TNT, with the caveat that the figure did not include Canadian viewership.
Since debuting with 6.1 million viewers on April 19, viewership for “The Last Dance” has slipped in each subsequent week. Even so, Sunday’s episodes retained 84% of the debut audience, an impressive level of retention after four weeks.
By comparison, the comparable installment of ESPN’s 2016 “O.J.: Made in America” series retained just 42% of the debut audience (1.44M, compared to 3.42M). Keep in mind part one of that series aired on ABC, and that the doc aired during a busy time on the sporting calendar.
“The Last Dance” now accounts for the six most-watched documentary debuts on ESPN. The previous high was 3.6 million for the debut of the 30 For 30 “You Don’t Know Bo” in 2012.
The initial live audience has told only part of the viewership story for “The Last Dance,” with viewership steadily rising as VOD, DVR and encore viewing has been included. The first six episodes have averaged 12.2 million viewers including these additional metrics, ranging from 9.34 million for episode six to 13.89 million for episode two.
As it has since the series debuted, Chicago led all markets Sunday with an 11.6 rating. North Carolina markets Greensboro (5.7) and Raleigh-Durham (4.6) followed, with Nashville (4.4) and Columbus, Ohio (4.2) rounding out the top five.
[Nielsen estimates from ESPN]
