The season’s first Thursday Night Football simulcast was a mixed bag in the ratings. Plus: the WNBA Finals bucked the trend of declines in sports viewing; the Preakness plunged to a new low; and more.
Season’s first TNF simulcast up, or down, depending on the comparison
Buccaneers-Bears averaged an 8.5 rating and 14.71 million viewers in the season’s first Thursday Night Football simulcast on FOX and NFL Network, down 19% in ratings and 18% in viewership from last year’s first simulcast, which took place one week earlier in the season (9/26/19 Eagles-Packers: 10.5, 17.91M). Versus the same week of last season, ratings fell just a tick (vs. 8.6) and viewership increased 3% (from 14.26M) over Rams-Seahawks.
Including streaming viewership on Amazon, Verizon, and the NFL and Fox Sports digital platforms, the game averaged 15.4 million — up 3% from Rams-Seahawks (15.0M).
WNBA Finals up double-digits despite sweep
The three-game Storm-Aces WNBA Finals averaged 440,000 viewers across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC — up 15% from last year’s five-game Mystics-Sun series (381K) but down 9% from Seattle’s sweep of Washington two years ago (481K). All three games of this year’s Finals took place on the same days as the NBA Finals, with the two weeknight games starting at the unusually early time of 7 PM ET.
Tuesday’s clinching Game 3 averaged 570,000 viewers, the largest audience for any WNBA Finals game since the winner-take-all Game 5 in 2017 (Sparks-Lynx: 902K) and the most-watched Game 3 since 2014 (Mercury-Sky: 607K). For the season, it ranks second among WNBA games behind a Wings-Mercury regular season game on ABC in August (599K).
Game 2 last Sunday averaged 405,000 on ABC, marking the least-watched Finals game on broadcast television. The previous low was 499,000 for last year’s Game 2. Finally, Game 1 on October 2 averaged 344,000 on ESPN2, the most-watched series-opener since 2017 on ABC (566K).
Preakness plunges, finishing clean sweep of declines Triple Crown
The race portion of horse racing’s Preakness Stakes averaged a 1.3 rating and 2.36 million viewers on NBC last Saturday, easily the lowest for any Triple Crown race since NBC began airing them in 2001. The numbers are in all probability all-time lows, but Preakness data prior to 2000 was not available.
Swiss Skydiver’s win plunged 62% in ratings and 56% in viewership from last year (3.4, 5.41M) and 73% and 70% respectively from eventual Triple Crown winner Justify’s win in 2018 (3.1, 4.91M).
The Preakness numbers come with the same asterisk affixed to all 2020 sporting events. The race aired nearly five months later than its original date as the final jewel of an elongated Triple Crown season and faced unusual college football competition. In addition, there was no Triple Crown at stake.
All three Triple Crown races this season were postponed from their original dates and all three hit historic lows in ratings and viewership, each declining well over 30 percent from last year.
Plus: NHL Draft, UFC, PTI
Tuesday’s round one of the NHL Draft averaged 259,000 viewers on NBCSN, down 29% from last year, which it took place as scheduled in June (365K). … Aided by a college football lead-in, last Saturday’s UFC main event on ESPN averaged a 0.7 rating and 1.10 million viewers — the series’ first audience in the millions since June (1.02M) and largest audience since May (1.20M)… Since returning to its usual timeslot and format in mid-July, ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption yet to average as many viewers as it did on March 11 (811K), coming closest on September 28 (800K).
[Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 10.9, ESPN PR 10.7, ShowBuzz Daily 10.6, 10.7]
