Ratings Roundup: WNBA on ESPN Earns Most-Watched Opener in Eight Years; CBS Sees Highest-Rated NWSL Match in History By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor
Thursday, July 30, 2020 - 9:00 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 WNBA got off to a hot start on ESPN, the NWSL concluded their bubble season with the highest-rated match in league history, NBC Sports' Premier League coverage hits new high in four years, MLB Opening Day on ESPN reaches the largest audience ever, and much more.
WNBA Generates Most-Watched Opener Since 2012
ESPN's WNBA opening weekend coverage (July 25 and 26) tipped the season off strong with Saturday's opener between the Los Angeles Sparks and Phoenix Mercury on ABC, becoming the league's most-watched opener on the ESPN family of networks since 2012 (average of 539,000 viewers). ESPN's four-game opening slate averaged 401,000 viewers across ESPN and ABC, up 63% over the 2019 WNBA regular season average on ESPN's Networks.
In addition to achieving a multi-year high, ABC's viewership for Saturday's Los Angeles Sparks vs. Phoenix Mercury match-up (3 p.m. ET) was up 19% from last year's season opener on ABC. The game peaked during the 3:45-4 p.m. quarter hour at 617,000 viewers and saw its strongest numbers in the following markets:
West Palm Beach (1.3)
Atlanta, Kansas City & Tulsa (1.0)
Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News & Phoenix (.9)
ABC's Sunday telecast between the Chicago Sky and the Las Vegas Aces (3 p.m.) averaged 433,000 viewers; the close game led to a peak audience of as 646,000 viewers watched in the final five minutes of the Sky's victory (5:15-5:20 p.m.).
ESPN's Saturday telecast between the Seattle Storm and New York Liberty (noon) averaged 419,000 viewers, making it the most watched season opener on ESPN since 2016. The game peaked in the 12:30-12:45 p.m. quarter hour with 526,000 viewers. Top performing markets include:
Seattle-Tacoma (1.2)
Jacksonville- N. Brunswick (1)
Birmingham (.9)
Sunday's match-up between the Connecticut Sun and the Minnesota Lynx on ESPN averaged 202,000 viewers.
NWSL Final Becomes Highest-Rated Match in League History
According to SportsMediaWatch, Sunday's Houston-Chicago NWSL Challenge Cup final averaged a 0.44 rating and 653,000 viewers on CBS, marking the highest rated and most-watched telecast in league history. The previous high was set by the tournament opener on CBS last month, which averaged a 0.37 and 572,000. Prior to this year, no NWSL match had ever exceeded 190,000 viewers.
Compared to last year's NWSL final, which aired on ESPN on an NFL Sunday, viewership jumped 293% from 166,000.
Only one MLS match all season has averaged a larger audience than Sunday's final, Nashville-Atlanta on the opening weekend of play in February (756K).
For the weekend, Houston-Chicago ranked second among soccer broadcasts behind the Manchester United-Leicester City English Premier League Championship Sunday match on NBC (0.50, 750K).
Premier League Hits New High on NBC
NBC Sports' presentation of the longest Premier League season ever - spanning 352 days due to the coronavirus pandemic - concluded this past Sunday, July 26 as the most-watched Premier League season in four years, according to official national data provided by Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics.
NBC Sports Group averaged a Total Audience Delivery of 462,000 viewers per match window for the 2019-20 season - marking the highest average Premier League viewership since 2015-16, and up 1% from last year (457,000) (does not include Spanish-language telecasts or NBC Sports Gold/Peacock streaming). Prior to the shutdown in mid-March, viewership was pacing 4% ahead of last season.
The five Championship Sunday matches on television registered a combined Total Audience Delivery of 1.7 million viewers (does not include the five matches streamed on NBC Sports Gold/Peacock).
Premier League Viewership Highlights include:
Manchester United's 2-0 win over Manchester City on Sunday, March 8 posted a Total Audience Delivery (TAD) average of 1.76 million viewers across all platforms - NBC, NBCSports.com, the NBC Sports app, and Telemundo - to rank as the most-watched live Premier League match in U.S. history.
NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app delivered 925.3 million live streaming minutes - the most all time - during the 2019-20 season. In addition, four of the 10 most-streamed Premier League matches of all time in the U.S. took place in 2019-20.
NBCSN registered a Total Audience Delivery average of 1.01 million viewers for the Aug. 11 Manchester United-Chelsea match - ranking as the most-watched opening weekend Premier League cable match ever in the U.S. and the most-watched cable match in four years.
New Year's Day Premier League coverage set viewership milestones on NBCSN as Arsenal-Manchester United became NBCSN's most-watched weekday match ever (721,000 viewers). NBCSN also delivered the most-watched New Year's Day Premier League coverage ever, averaging 492,000 viewers across four matches.
NBCSN's weekday afternoon matches during the Premier League's Project Restart averaged 315,000 viewers - up 32% from weekday matches this season prior to the March shutdown (239,000), and 45% above the full 2018-19 season weekday afternoon average. In addition, since June 17, NBCSN televised four of the six most-watched weekday Premier League matches since 2014 (excluding holidays).
Premier League highlights on NBCSports.com, the NBC Sports app, and the NBC Sports channel on YouTube, and NBC Sports Soccer content across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook this season generated more than 200
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: WNBA on ESPN Earns Most-Watched Opener in Eight Years; CBS Sees Highest-Rated NWSL Match in History By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor 
