Airing the MLB Draft for the first time in 12 years, ESPN scored its largest weekday audience in three weeks. Plus: a weak return to the ring for Top Rank Boxing; figures for German Cup soccer and more.
MLB Draft posts ESPN’s top weekday audience in three weeks
The first round of the Major League Baseball draft averaged 611,000 viewers on ESPN and MLB Network Wednesday night, up 101% from last year (304K) and 91% from 2018 (320K), when coverage aired on MLB Network alone and faced competition from MLB games.
ESPN attracted the bulk of the audience, averaging 432,000 for its first draft production since 2008. It was the network’s most-watched weekday program in three weeks, since a rebroadcast of Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals averaged 608,000.
With ESPN siphoning away viewers, MLB Network’s audience sank to 179,000, 41% below its solo audience last year.
While no match for the NFL Draft, which averaged 15.6 million on night one and 8.4 million overall, Wednesday’s opening round comfortably topped the WNBA Draft on ESPN in April (378K).
Top Rank Boxing KOed in return
The return of Top Rank Boxing averaged 397,000 viewers on ESPN Tuesday night, down 54% from the previous live edition in February (862K). Keep in mind the February telecast had a direct college basketball lead-in.
Tuesday’s telecast averaged fewer viewers than several of the classic boxing rebroadcasts ESPN has aired over the past few months, including a re-air of the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier trilogy that averaged 647,000 on April 18.
Not much audience for German Cup semis
Soccer’s German Cup semifinals averaged 127,000 viewers on ESPN, including 140,000 for Bayern Munich-Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday and 113,000 for Bayer Leverkusen-FC Saarbrücken on Tuesday. By comparison, the most recent weekday Bundesliga match on FS1 — Bayern Munich-Dortmund on May 26 — averaged 290,000.
Plus: Inside the NBA, Encores, Supercross
Last Thursday’s “Inside the NBA” special on TNT averaged just 188,000 viewers, down 49% from the show’s previous edition on March 12, the day after the NBA suspended its season (367K). … The PGA Tour led last weekend’s sports encores, with CBS averaging a 0.57 and 825,000 for the final round of the 2012 Memorial tournament. Elsewhere, NBC averaged a 0.44 and 638,000 for an encore of American Pharoah clinching the Triple Crown in the 2015 Belmont Stakes and a 0.42 and 628,000 for an encore of Super Bowl 20 in 1986 (Bears-Patriots). … Coverage of the AMA Supercross series averaged 195,000 viewers on NBCSN Sunday, up 30% from abbreviated coverage in an earlier timeslot the previous week. Additional coverage on Wednesday averaged 155,000, down 8% from a later window the previous week (169K).
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 6.11, 6.10, 6.9 a, b, 6.5]
