2020 NFL Draft Round 1 Busted TV Ratings Record & Sonned ‘Last Dance’

| Posted on |

Everyone is watching the 2020 NFL Draft…like, everyone. Ahead of Day 2, the league announced that Thursday’s broadcast registered as the most-watched NFL Draft in history, averaging 15.6 million viewers across ESPN networks and the NFL Network. Even more impressive, as many as 19.6 million viewers watched at one time (8:45-9 p.m.), nearly doubling last year’s high (11.4 million), and the first round smashed last year’s average by 37 percent.

Prior to Thursday’s broadcast, the 2014 NFL Draft held the championship belt for most eyeballs (12.4 million), per ESPN.

This really wasn’t a surprise as the draft fed a starving sports audience something real. Thursday was a Ruth’s Chris steak dinner after weeks of Fish Filets (old games) and Whopper Jr.s (talk shows without anything to talk about).

READ:  Basketball Reference Put Together a Viewers Guide For 'Last Dance' Series

We don’t know if the NFL season will even go on as planned — that hurts to say, but it’s reality — yet it was another notch on the league’s bedpost. People thought everyone was watching the debut of Last Dance but it wasn’t even close. Even if you combined viewership from the first two Last Dance episodes — Ep. 1 (6.3 million); Ep. 2 (5.8 million) — and threw in the 2019 NBA Draft (3.08 million) for good measure, the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft still wins by a half-million people. It’s not apples to apples, of course, but it’s still insane. The NFL has infinite stroke.