NBA

Last weekend’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest averaged 5.0 million viewers across ABC and ESPN2, more-than-tripling last year (1.6M) and easily the largest audience on record for the event. The previous high was 2.8 million for a taped airing in 2014 that immediately followed a FIFA World Cup match.

Coverage of Wimbledon was averaging 759,000 viewers on the ESPN networks through the quarterfinals, up 24% from last year and the networks’ highest average at this point of the tournament. Read more

FOX averaged a 1.4 rating and 3.335 million viewers for regional Major League Baseball coverage last weekend, marking the network’s largest audience of the season and the second-largest across all networks. The high water mark is 4.2 million for a partially preempted Yankees-Red Sox “Sunday Night Baseball” game on NBC last month, a figure that combines a Nielsen-measured linear audience with streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics. Read more

Last weekend’s second week of the BIG3 averaged a 0.4 rating and 677,000 viewers on CBS, up a third in ratings and 23% in viewership from week two last year. Both weeks of the three-on-three basketball league have increased from a year ago despite World Cup competition (with the standard caveat regarding changes in Nielsen methodology).

Benefitting from a FIFA World Cup lead-in, last weekend’s NHRA Nationals from Norwalk (Ohio) averaged a 0.8 rating and 1.47 million viewers on FOX — the sixth-largest audience on record for an NHRA event. The telecast, which peaked with 2.7 million viewers, more-than-doubled last year’s Norwalk event. Read more

Last weekend’s Yankees-Red Sox Major League Baseball game on ABC averaged a 1.0 rating and 1.99 million viewers, comfortably surpassing the network’s previous MLB window last month (Giants-Cubs: 1.41M). Read more

CBS averaged a 1.0 rating and 1.57 million viewers for Sparks-Fever last Saturday night and a 0.9 and 1.53 million for Aces-Sky the following day, marking the fourth and fifth-largest audiences of the WNBA season, and the top two that did not feature Fever G Caitlin Clark. Read more