ESPN continues college hoops hot streak with big Michigan-Duke audience
College hoops continues having a strong season headed into the home stretch, and last Saturday, ESPN had one of its best days on record. Michigan-Duke delivered 4.3 million viewers, which is the network’s best regular-season game in seven years, and seventh-best game on record.
Audience Analysis: Olympics helps ‘Miracle’ movie to big gains on Disney+
The NHL’s Keith Wachtel on the SBJ Sports Media Podcast this week talked about what sort of viewership bump the league might expect in the two months before the playoffs after a strong hockey tourney at the Milan Cortina Olympics. We’ll see how that plays out, but one platform seeing an early Olympi...
Unrivaled, TNT bringing studio show to Miami for championship
Unrivaled wraps up its regular season Friday night in Miami and rolls right in the first round of the playoffs on Saturday in Miami, with the semis Monday in Brooklyn and championship Wednesday back in Miami. For that title game, TNT Sports will bring its “Unrivaled Studio Show” live to Sephora Aren...
NBC’s Milan Olympic audience: 59% watched in primetime, 41% live during daytime
The Milan Cortina Games were the most-watched Winter Olympics since Sochi in 2014, with an average of 23.5 million viewers this year across NBC, USA Network, CNBC and Peacock. That almost doubles the audience seen during the Beijing Winter Games in 2022. Back in 2014, the figure for similar windows ...
ESPN Unlimited authentication live for Xfinity subscribers
Xfinity subscribers can authenticate on the ESPN app at the Unlimited level starting today, which will give them access in time for Saturday’s Elimination Chamber, WWE’s second premium live event of the year. Authentication access for Comcast and YouTube TV subscribers has been delayed due to linger...
NHL estimates U.S.-Canada could have pulled 35 million with better start time
The NHL estimates that Sunday’s U.S.-Canada men’s hockey gold medal game could have reached 35 million viewers with a more favorable start time. NBC’s figure for the 8am ET game was 18.6 million viewers (20.7 with the USA Network replay later in the day). While that was good enough to be the most-wa...
ESPN, American Cornhole League renew for three more years
The American Cornhole League and ESPN have renewed their media-rights agreement for another three years through 2028, extending a partnership that dates back to 2016 on ESPN3 (the first linear TV ACL event was on ESPN2 in 2017). This is now the fourth time the two sides have struck a new deal. The A...
NBC lands second-best Olympic hockey audience with USA-Canada thriller
NBC drew its second-best Olympic hockey audience on record with Team USA’s win over Canada in OT on Sunday morning (8:15-11am ET), drawing 18.6 million viewers. That’s behind only the 27.6 million for Canada’s OT win over the U.S. in 2010 that was in a more favorable time zone (3:15pm start). Sunday...
Netflix to use Nielsen audience numbers for MLB games
MLB games on Netflix this season will be measured by Nielsen, sources tell SBJ, meaning the industry standard for viewership measurement will be used for the Home Run Derby, Field of Dreams Game and Yankees-Giants on Opening Day. Netflix, which offered no comment on the news, is entering the first s...
Sources: YouTube emerging as early leader for NFL four-pack of regular-season games
YouTube is negotiating with the NFL to acquire rights to the four games the league kept as part of its ESPN equity deal, but a number of parties remain interested in the package, sources tell SBJ. It’s unknown what that mix of games would be. Sources added that there have been “lots of inbound” to t...