Ratings Roundup: MLS Is Back Notches Big Opener; NBC Scores With NASCAR-IndyCar Doubleheader By SVG Staff
Friday, July 10, 2020 - 9:30 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Ratings roundup is a rundown of rating news from the past week and is derived from press releases and reports around the industry. In this week's edition, the MLS Is Back Tournament opener Nets ESPN big viewership, NBC Sports draws a big crowd for its first NASCAR race of the season, CBS Sports continues to tee up big viewership for the PGA Tour, and much more.
MLS Is Back Opener Posts Big Viewership
Wednesday night's MLS is Back Tournament opening match (a 2-1 Orlando City SC victory over in-state rival Inter Miami CF) averaged 492,000 viewers on ESPN and ESPN Deportes. This is the second most-viewed MLS regular-season telecast (over 64 matches) on ESPN networks since March 11, 2018, when 583,000 people (2+) tuned in for DC United vs. Atlanta United; behind 663,000 combined viewers for the 2020 season-opening LAFC-Inter Miami CF match on March 1. On ESPN, the MLS is Back Tournament opener averaged 464,000 viewers - ESPN's fifth most-viewed regular season telecast in five seasons. The audience peaked from 9:45-10 p.m. ET with 521,000 viewers. On ESPN Deportes, an additional 28,000 viewers watched.
Season-to-date, Major League Soccer is averaging 489,000 combined viewers on ESPN and ESPN Deportes, a 27 percent increase compared to the first four matches in 2019 (384,000 viewers). Orlando City SC-Inter Miami CF is ESPN's fourth match of the 2020 MLS season. The previous three were played in early March before the season was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
NBC Sports Draws Big Audience for First NASCAR Race of Season
NBC Sports' first NASCAR Cup Series race of the 2020 season produced significant viewership gains from 2019, as the Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 Powered by Big Machine Records at Indianapolis Motor Speedway averaged a Total Audience Delivery (TAD) of 4.370 million viewers - up 46% vs. same race in 2019, which ran in September (according to Fast National data by Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics). Sunday's race, which started roughly an hour late due to weather, was also up 32% compared to last year's NASCAR Cup Series Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway on the comparable weekend (7/7/2019), which delivered a TAD of 3.313 million viewers.
Additional ratings highlights from NBC Sports' first NASCAR Cup Series race of the 2020 season, include a 2.67 HH rating, up 41% vs. last year's Brickyard (1.89 rating) and up 26% vs. last year's race at Daytona (2.12 rating); 4.343 million TV-only viewers, up 46% vs. last year's race (2.974 million) and up 32% vs. Daytona (3.288 million); Peak viewership of 5.018 million TV-only viewers from 8:30-8:45 p.m. ET; and 26,800 Average Minute Audience (AMA) streaming on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app, up 57% vs. last year's Brickyard (17,000) and 9% compared to Daytona.
Viewership for the race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (5:24-9 p.m. ET) was up 39% vs. the 2019 NASCAR Cup Series average on NBC (3.146 million viewers; seven races). The race also stands as NBC's most-watched sports program since January's NFL Divisional Playoff between the Minnesota Vikings and San Francisco 49ers (1/11/20; 30.210 million viewers).
Meanwhile,, viewership of Saturday's INDYCAR GMR Grand Prix on NBC was up 7% vs. the same race in 2019, while the NASCAR Xfinity Series Pennzoil 150 was the most-watched Xfinity race from the Brickyard in three years (1.693 million, NBCSN, 2017), up 21% vs. the series' four races on NBC in 2019.
CBS Sports Continues PGA Tour Momentum
CBS Sports Final-Round Coverage of Rocket Mortgage Classic delivered a 56% rise in viewership over last year with 2.893 million viewers. Overall, CBS Sports' coverage of the four PGA Tour events since the return to golf in June is up 26% in viewership over the same tournaments last year, averaging 2.386 million viewers.
Odds and Ends: Hot Dog Eating, F1, TBT, German Cup Final, and Cornhole
The socially-distanced version of the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on ESPN last Saturday averaged 966,000 viewers, the smallest audience since 2005 when it received 860,000 viewers
Sunday's Formula 1 opener - the Austrian Grand Prix - averaged a 0.5 rating and 752,000 viewers on ESPN, which is the largest audience for the event since it returned to the schedule in 1997
The opening weekend of The Basketball Tournament averaged 173,000 viewers across ESPN and ESPN2, with none of the eight games exceeding 210,000 viewers
Saturday's German Cup final between Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen averaged 108,000 viewers on ESPN2, up 38% from last year on ESPNEWS (79K)
ESPN averaged its largest Cornhole audience this year with 349,000 viewers for Saturday's post-Hot Dog Contest window.
Check out SportsMediaWatch's ratings page for more in-depth coverage
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Ratings Roundup: MLS Is Back Notches Big Opener; NBC Scores With NASCAR-IndyCar Doubleheader By SVG Staff 
