ratings Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Rory McIlroy's Masters repeat scores CBS' best ratings in 11 years
Rory McIlroy's sixth career major title -- his second consecutive win at the Masters -- earned a major ratings boost for CBS in the final round on Sunday afternoon.,The fourth round averaged nearly 14 million viewers -- 13,995,000, more precisely -- the most to watch CBS for the final day from Augus...

WNBA draft second-most watched ever with 1.5M viewers
With uncertainty over the identity of the top overall pick and new NCAA champion UCLA producing a record number of selections, the WNBA draft drew its second-highest viewership total ever on Monday.,According to ESPN, 1.5 million watched the event, a 20% increase from last year's draft. The audience...

UCLA's championship win drew 3rd-highest rating for women's final
UCLA's romp to the Women's NCAA Tournament championship against South Carolina on Sunday, despite the one-sided score, drew the third-highest rating for a women's title game, ESPN announced on Tuesday.,The Bruins' 79-51 victory over the Gamecocks drew an average of 9.9 million viewers with a peak of...

Men's NCAA Tournament TV ratings best in 30-plus years
As the Final Four approaches, some blocks of the 2026 men's NCAA Tournament have been the most watched in more than 30 years, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel numbers released Wednesday.,CBS Sports and TNT Sports averaged 10.3 million viewers through last weekend's Elite Eight, making it the mo...

Venezuela's WBC title win over U.S. draws record ratings
Venezuela's win over the United States didn't just deliver the World Baseball Classic's first new champion in a decade, it also delivered the biggest audience the tournament has ever seen. ,Tuesday's title game from Miami averaged 10.78 million viewers across FOX, Fox Deportes, and streaming, settin...

Tyler Reddick's Daytona 500 win scores massive ratings for Fox
Tyler Reddick's victory in the 2026 Daytona 500 scored massive ratings for Fox Sports, which saw an 11% increase over last year's race.,The 7.489 million viewers for the race out-paced every non-prime Winter Olympics window on broadcast and cable and was the most-watched NASCAR race since the 2023 D...

All-Star events draw biggest audience in 24 years
The NBA's All-Star festivities drew their largest viewing audience in nearly a quarter-century last weekend, the league announced Thursday.,The league said 46 million people in the United States watched All-Star weekend across the NBC platforms and ESPN, the most since 2011 and more than triple last...

Super Bowl LX ratings given late boost, still shy of record
Nielsen adjusted the ratings for Super Bowl LX, bumping the final viewership numbers to 125.6 million.,The Seattle Seahawks' victory over the New England Patriots was originally reported to have averaged 124.9 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo and other digital platforms. Nielsen said t...

New NBA All-Star Game format draws highest ratings in 15 years
The NBA's midseason showcase finally got the bounce it's been chasing.,The first All-Star broadcast on NBC since 2002 averaged 8.8 million viewers across broadcast and streaming, marking the event's biggest audience since 2011, according to preliminary Nielsen data and Adobe Analytics on Monday.,Tha...

NBC sees 93% Winter Olympics ratings spike through first 5 days
NBCUniversal has seen an average of 26.5 million viewers during the first five nights of the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, the most to this point since the 2014 Sochi Games, it announced Tuesday.,That translates into a 93% increase from the same period at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and inclu...

Alcaraz vs. Djokovic draws biggest ratings for Australian Open in 9 years
A compelling final between two of tennis' biggest names meant a big ratings increase for the Australian Open, Front Office Sports reported.,Carlos Alcaraz's victory over Novak Djokovic, despite a 3:30 a.m. ET start time Sunday on ESPN, drew 730,000 viewers, according to Nielsen data. That's a 57% bo...

NFL's wild-card drama scores huge ratings
The NFL's blockbuster regular season rolled straight into wild-card weekend, and the audiences followed.,Fox opened Saturday with the Rams' 34-31 victory over the Panthers drawing 28 million viewers, up 7% over last year in the same time slot for the biggest Saturday afternoon wild-card audience on ...

TGL ratings hold steady with holiday start to season
Television ratings for the start of TGL's second season are holding steady with last year's viewership numbers.,The Dec. 28 season opener for the indoor team golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy garnered 646,000 viewers on ABC and the second match on Jan. 2 drew 354,000 viewers, ac...

NFL sees second highest TV ratings on record for regular season
The NFL closed the regular season with an average audience of 18.7 million per game across TV and digital, the league's second-highest mark since Nielsen began tracking in 1988 and just shy of the 1989 record of 19.0 million.,The 2025 figure marked a 10% rise from last season (17.5 million) and 7% f...

CFP ratings plummet 7% as games opposite NFL struggle again
While college football is big business, the NFL remains king as more evidence arrived from last weekend's television ratings.,Even the first round of the College Football Playoff last Friday and Saturday struggled to compete against opposing NFL regular-season games on the airwaves.,The four first-r...

Heisman presentation scores highest ratings in 13 years
Saturday night's Heisman Trophy presentation to Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza drew the largest television audience for the event since 2012.,The show averaged 4.3 million viewers on ABC, the highest number since 2012 when 4.9 million watched Texas A&M signal-caller Johnny Manziel become the f...

Viewership of NFL Network international games sets record
The 2025 NFL International Games on NFL Network set the record for viewership.,The network said Wednesday that the six games -- one in Dublin, three in London, one in Berlin and one in Madrid -- drew an average of 6.2 million viewers via television and digital media.,The average number of viewers wa...

Game 7 of World Series watched by 27.3M in U.S., most since 2017
Feverish interest in Game 7 of the World Series produced giant ratings for Fox Sports, which revealed Tuesday that 27.3 million viewers across the United States tuned into the championship decider.,The Los Angeles Dodgers' 5-4 comeback win over the Toronto Blue Jays was the most-watched World Series...

ESPN networks break WNBA viewership records
Broadcasts of the WNBA regular season and postseason were the most-watched ever across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2.,For 25 regular season games, WNBA action on ESPN networks averaged 1.3 million viewers, up 6% year-over-year. The numbers across 24 postseason games were up 5% with an average of 1.2 million v...

NFL ratings continue to soar into October
The NFL is continuing to enjoy soaring television ratings, with games through Week 5 averaging a viewership of 18.58 million.,That is up 8 percent from the comparable average last year and 9 percent from 2023. It also represents the second highest mark at this point in the season in league history b...