NFL Draft TV Ratings Were BOOMING!!!

The sports world continues to suffer from the worst pandemic in history, so when the NFL Draft took place from Thursday the 23rd to Saturday the 25th the league and ESPN got a shocking surprise. That surprise was TV ratings which showed that the Draft was the most-watched in the history of the league. I will get to the numbers in a moment.

First, it was held as a virtual draft. In this day of social distancing, it was the only move the NFL could. There were discussions of postponing the Draft by Roger Goodell may the decision to hold it as a virtual even and it was the right call. The NFL Commissioner may the announcement of every pick from his basement while all the coaches made their draft decisions from the comfort of their own homes.

Now let’s take a look at the numbers. Last year’s draft set new records, according to Nielsen Ratings. That event had a 3.9 household TV rating and an average of 6.1 million viewers across regular television and other digital platforms. According to Nielsen, more than 47.5 million TV viewers watched the three-day event, which was up 5% from 2018.

The numbers this year were far better. It began with a very impressive 1st round, which saw an average of 15.6 million viewers attend. The previous high for the 1st round was back in 2014 when 12.4 viewers tuned in. This year’s 1st round completely obliterated the record and that shows the pent up demand that the fans have for anything sports-related. In contrast, Game 1 of the 2019 World Series drew 12.2 million viewers, while Game 1 of the 2019 NBA Finals drew 13.6 million. At its peak, the draft drew 19.4 million viewers, which was a 37% increase over last year’s 11.4 million views at its peak.

The draft was covered over ABC, ESPN, The NFL Network, and ESPN Deportes, along with their digital channels using over 600 camera feeds from coaches, Goodell, and many NFL prospects. For the three-day event, The NFL Draft drew 55 million viewers, which is an all-time high and up 165 over last year’s draft. That is a number of people that tuned into the draft for even a few minutes. Overall, an average of 8.4 million viewers tuned in to the event and that comfortable beat the previous high of 6.2 million viewers on average, which was set last year.

The NFL does have plans of keeping some of the elements that the virtual draft had this year but it is unclear which elements will be kept. Still, the 2020 NFL Virtual draft was a rousing success, no matter how you look at it.