SBJ Media: Jimmy Pitaro keeps marching ESPN into the future
SBJ Media: Jimmy Pitaro keeps marching ESPN into the future
Early numbers have Masters final round at best figure for CBS since 2018
Rory McIlroy’s drama-filled win at the Masters on Sunday delivered CBS the best final round for the first major of the year since 2018, per fast-national Nielsen data.
ESPN draws best Q1 viewership since 2017
ESPN got off to a hot start in 2025, drawing its most-viewed Q1 since 2017, reports SBJ’s Austin Karp.
ESPN giving boost to La Liga deal, placing FC Barcelona-Real Madrid on ESPN for first time
ESPN is looking to give a boost to the FC Barcelona-Real Madrid match on May 11, with the regular-season La Liga matchup getting its ESPN debut (the first time a regular-season El Clásico has aired on any English-language TV network). ESPN is in the fourth season of an eight-year, $1.4B media-rights...
ESPN not worried about UFC window expiring
With ESPN’s exclusive negotiating window with UFC expiring on Tuesday, the property is set to take its media rights to market. However, ESPN Chair Jimmy Pitaro on Thursday told SBJ that even with the window expiring, that doesn’t mean UFC will be leaving ESPN.
Audience Analysis: College Basketball Crown tops NIT; Ovechkin drives TNT, Monumental
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...
NCAA men’s title game audience best since 2019
CBS drew 18.1 million viewers for Florida’s win over Houston in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship on Monday night, marking the title game’s best figure since Virginia-Texas Tech drew 19.6 million in 2019 (the year before out-of-home metrics were added by Nielsen).
PGA Tour on NBC easily tops LIV on Fox in first head-to-head network battle
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The PGA Tour handily outdrew LIV Golf on Sunday as the two tours went head-to-head on broadcast TV for the first time. The tour averaged 1.75 million viewers for Brian Harman’s three-shot win in the Valero Texas Open, while LIV averaged just 484,000 viewers for Marc Leishman’s victor...
FIFA plans legacy fund for Club World Cup markets
As part of FIFA’s first expanded Club World Cup this summer in the U.S., the governing body plans to deploy a legacy fund for host markets. Each of the 11 host markets will receive $1M to go toward the fund, and a primary goal of that is to build the development of soccer pitches for local denizens ...
SBJ Media: NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship audience comes back to Earth
SBJ Media: NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship audience comes back to Earth