Fox drew 822,000 viewers for the debut championship game for the College Basketball Crown on Sunday (Nebraska-UCF). That figure is 62% better than the 508,000 viewers that ESPN drew on Thursday night for the NIT championship (UT Chattanooga-UC Irvine). Even with an overtime game, the NIT title match was down 64% from last year’s Seton Hall-Indiana State game (lots of buzz around ISU’s Robbie Avila). Fox on Saturday also drew 780,000 viewers for Nebraska-Boise State in one semifinal, then 651,000 for UCF-Villanova. Across all Crown games on FS1 and Fox, the first year of the event averaged 260,000 viewers, up 23% from the NIT across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU this season (212,000). If you remove the ESPNU games, the NIT was actually 3% higher than the Crown on Fox/FS1.
TNT/truTV drew 905,000 viewers on Sunday for Islanders-Capitals, as Alex Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretsky’s all-time NHL regular-season scoring record. That figure is TNT Sports’ best non-Winter Classic regular-season game yet. The game was blacked out in the D.C. market, as Monumental Sports Network carried the game there. But while a record for TNT, the audience was lower compared to some head-to-head competition, like the PBR on CBS (925,000) or Premier League on NBC (1.4 million). Meanwhile, Monumental on its own on Friday drew its best regular-season Capitals audience since at least the start of the 2022-23 season, as Ovechkin scored two goals to tie Gretzky’s record. MSN is now up 39% for the season in both DC and Baltimore compared to last season.
While the PGA Tour easily topped LIV Golf on Sunday, the event at Doral did deliver LIV its best audience yet (484,000 viewers). That passed the 432,000 that the CW drew last season for the final round at Mayakoba). The final day average for LIV in 2024 was 195,000 viewers. FS1 drew 137,000 viewers for LIV on Saturday, and Fox on Friday drew 369,000 (LIV’s third-best audience yet).
NASCAR saw a 15% jump for viewership of the Cup Series race from Darlington on Sunday, with FS1 bringing in 2.52 million viewers (that’s compared to Martinsville on the same weekend last season). That should help cut into the Cup Series’ 10% drop at the start of the season.
The chart below lists viewership figures for select recent sports telecasts.
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