You know those less-sexy sports that make otherwise-obsessed sports fans say, “I wouldn’t watch that if it were the only thing on TV”? Turns out, a lot of those people were wrong.
The gradual reintroduction of sports has tested that statement for many. With baseball, hockey, and basketball not even close to restarting, sports fans are tuning in to watch NASCAR, mixed martial arts, German soccer, and even the most derided “boring” sport, golf.
When Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning teed off against Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady on May 24, the four Turner Sports channels airing the match play charity event drew 5.8 million viewers, on average, peaking at 6.3 million. Those numbers made it the most-viewed golf event in cable history (the final days of golf’s major championships are typically shown on network TV) — and in the process raised $20 million for COVID-19 relief.
That evening, NASCAR’s longest race of the season, the Coca-Cola 600, drew 3.7 million viewers on FOX. That’s down from last year’s 4 million, but the network still got more viewers that night than any other network. On May 17, NASCAR’s first race back averaged 6.3 million viewers, the most for any non-Daytona 500 race in over three years.
The return of UFC fighting on May 16 got 1.2 million viewers for ESPN, though that pales in comparison to the 5.65 million viewers (on average) who tuned in for the 10-episode-long Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance.
For soccer fans, the only major league playing right now is the German Bundesliga. Thanks to mass testing and a relatively low spread of COVID-19 there, it’s probably the biggest team sports league in the world allowed to operate. Fewer Americans are tuning in compared to U.S.-based prime-time sporting events, with an average of about 365,000 viewers for the league’s first matches back. But the matches (typically airing on FS1, with weekend kickoffs at 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on the East Coast) saw an eightfold increase in viewership compared to the last match aired before the break.
One day, sports fans will be able to spend their evenings flipping back and forth between the MLB regular season, NHL playoffs, and NBA playoffs. Until then, they’ll have to settle for the sports they once claimed were too boring to watch.
