TV ratings for sports other than hockey

[Kirk Van Houten]

Strong audience for Colorado's blowout loss to Nebraska

Saturday’s Colorado-Nebraska college football game averaged 6.3 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, according to Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — easily the most-watched game in the network’s “Big Ten Saturday Night” franchise. As was the case for their closer-than-expected opener against North Dakota State (4.76M), Colorado did not draw quite as well as for the equivalent game last season, which also put the Buffaloes against Nebraska. Viewership declined 28% from that year-ago matchup, which averaged a Nielsen-only audience of 8.7 million in the FOX “Big Noon Saturday” window. Last season, it took until mid-October before a single Colorado game averaged fewer than seven million viewers. Coming off of a near-disaster against FCS North Dakota State and a blowout loss to the Cornhuskers in which they trailed 28-0 at halftime, it may be the case that Colorado does not get to that mark once this season. Even so, audiences of four and six million for Colorado football would have been unthinkable two years ago, when the team played one game all year with a seven-figure audience (its season-opener against TCU averaged 1.25 million).

 

[Kirk Van Houten]

Brady's FOX debut shy of 24 million as Cowboys rout Browns

With the Cowboys on field, Tom Brady in the booth and no CBS competition, FOX had all it needed for a huge TV audience -- except a good game.

www.sportsmediawatch.com

With most of the country receiving Cowboys-Browns (Tom Brady’s broadcasting debut), Sunday’s NFL national window on FOX averaged 23.8 million viewers — a 46% increase over last year (mostly Packers-Bears: 16.27M) and the network’s largest Week 1 audience since 2020. That superlative comes with an important caveat; 2020 was also the last time that FOX and CBS did not air competing doubleheaders in Week 1. Last season, FOX not only had to compete with a CBS doubleheader, it was outdrawn head-to-head — as CBS scored more than 21 million for its late game. Overall, considerably fewer viewers were watching FOX alone this year than were watching FOX and CBS combined last year (37.62M).

In other early returns from Sunday, NBC and Peacock averaged 22.7 million viewers for Rams-Lions on Sunday Night Football, per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — up 3% from Cowboys-Giants last year (22.0M). The Adobe Analytics streaming audience of 2.8 million is what pulled viewership ahead of last year, as the Nielsen-only figure would come out to about 19.9 million — off from last year’s 20.2 million.

 

[Kirk Van Houten]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1833576582021345353

 

[LadyStanley]

https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-averaged-21-million-viewers-130038738.html

NFL averages 23m/game in first week.

 

[Kirk Van Houten]

Slight decline for TNF opener, but still third-best game on Prime

Viewership slipped for the season debut of Thursday Night Football, though the game might have surpassed last year had it been competitive.

www.sportsmediawatch.com

In the season premiere of NFL Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video, the Bills’ rout of the Dolphins averaged 14.96 million viewers — down 1% from Vikings-Eagles last year (15.06M) but still the third-largest NFL audience ever on Prime, trailing only Vikings-Eagles and Seahawks-Cowboys later the same season (15.26M). As has been the case for TNF in the Prime era, the audience makeup was considerably younger than that of the other NFL broadcasters. Thursday’s median age was 46.6, nearly eight years younger than that of the traditional NFL broadcasters in Week 1 (54.2).

 

[Kirk Van Houten]

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2024/09/nascar-ratings-atlanta-mlb-fox-espn-paralympics-pbr-nwsl/

The Nielsen-rated portion of last Sunday’s San Diego-North Carolina NWSL match — the final appearance of Alex Morgan — averaged 76,000 on ESPN2. The match also aired on ESPN+, CBSSN, Paramount+ and Prime Video, none of which are Nielsen-rated.