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Breaking News from the Bench to the Bleachers
The good times keep rolling for the NHL. After posting major viewership gains throughout the regular season, the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs saw a nearly 70% increase versus last year’s audience. The first round of the NHL’s postseason averaged 1.2 million viewers across ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, and truTV, according to data…
The NFL will continue to find ways to put more games on streaming services, and the league will continue to suggest it’s doing so because that’s where viewers are headed. The league certainly is not wrong on that point. Streaming is growing as a share of television consumption with each passing year, while traditional distribution…
Nielsen is continuing to develop new ways to find viewers that have not traditionally been captured in its samples. The company’s newest experiment is designed to better capture “co-viewing,” industry parlance for when several people watch a telecast together in the same room. While Nielsen’s co-viewing measurements are still in the pilot phase and thus…
MLB sacrificed fans for revenue. The Blue Jays and Twins will find this out the hard way, as Sunday's matchup between Trey Yesavage and Joe Ryan will have limited viewership on Peacock.
NBC has made an unprecedented push in live sports on broadcast television thanks to their new TV contracts with the NBA and MLB. And it will pay off in a huge way on Saturday with a massive day of sports. NBC will air the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. And although it may not immediately jump…
Local NHL broadcasts seemingly experienced similar growth to what was seen in the national numbers this regular season. According to a report by Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal, local regular-season NHL telecasts grew by 15% versus last year thanks to a big uptick in streaming viewership and the transition of some teams to an…
The NFL Draft still commands massive attention, even with a slight step back in viewership this year. Across its three-day run, the event averaged 6.6 million viewers, down 12% from last year’s 7.5 million mark, AwfulAnnouncing reports. That dip aligns with a quieter stretch during the later rounds. Unlike 2025, which featured Shedeur Sanders’ unexpected […] The post NFL Draft ratings fall 12% as Day 2, 3 drama fades appeared first on ClutchPoints.
A comparative lack of drama across Days 2 and 3 of the NFL Draft led to a double-digit dip in viewership compared to last year. Last week’s NFL Draft averaged 6.6 million viewers during its entire three-day run across ABC, ESPN, NFL Network, ESPN Deportes, Disney+, Hulu, the ESPN app, NFL+, TikTok, YouTube, and X.…
Draymond Green drew criticism from WNBA fans after attributing the league's viewership growth to Caitlin Clark's style of play during a podcast appearance.
We are a week and a half into the NBA playoffs, and the league continues to see strong viewership numbers. Through 27 telecasts, the 2026 NBA playoffs are the most viewed since 1993. As of Sunday, the NBA is averaging 3.84 million viewers for first-round playoff games on ABC, NBC, ESPN, and Prime Video. That’s…
ESPN will begin to broadcast The CW Sports content, including the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series, this upcoming summer.
The 2026 NFL Draft attracted 13 million viewers, surpassing the average NBA Finals game and proving football reigns supreme.
Perhaps more than any other television rating, the NFL Draft is the hardest to parse out given the myriad of broadcasts, both linear and digital, available to viewers. For that reason, it’s difficult to compare NFL Draft viewership to most other television programs. That won’t stop the league from touting strong viewership, however. And across…
The offseason showcase has a surprising dip in its initial audience.
The NHL announced last week that the Utah Mammoth will host the Colorado Avalanche in the 2027 Winter Classic on Dec. 31 at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City. For the second time in three years, the league’s marquee outdoor event will be played on New Year’s Eve. The first time produced the smallest audience…
Both the NBA and NHL playoffs got underway last weekend as one of the busiest periods in North American sport begins, and while both recorded strong viewing figures, they tell two different stories
The opening weekend of the NBA Playoffs averaged 4.3 million viewers.
ESPN’s first foray into live WWE programming on its linear networks produced some solid returns. WrestleMania 42 coverage on ESPN and ESPN2 last weekend averaged 1.72 million viewers across simulcast windows on Saturday and Sunday evening, per Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports. Those figures do not include viewers watching on ESPN Unlimited, the only…
Four of this year’s eight signature events have already been played.
Stephen Curry and the Warriors aided the high viewership.
After posting the worst viewership under its current broadcast deals last season, the NHL had a major rebound in 2025-26. NHL viewership averaged 546,000 viewers across ESPN, ABC, and TNT/truTV this regular season, the league’s best mark since the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, per viewership data from Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal. Incredibly, the league…
The conventional wisdom is that moving sporting events to streaming sacrifices audience reach for giant tech dollars. Amazon Prime Video is trying to prove that is not the case. Prime Video is in the first year of their massive new rights deal with the NBA. And as far as the streaming competition goes, they have…
The next World Baseball Classic won’t be sold separately, according to Sports Media Watch. Rights to the 2028 tournament will be negotiated alongside MLB’s broader media rights talks. Every national contract the league currently holds — Fox, ESPN, NBC, Netflix, Apple, TBS — expires that same year, and rather than negotiate WBC rights separately, the…
