The NFL Draft averaged its largest audience on record, save for the anomalous COVID edition five years ago.
Coverage of the NFL Draft averaged a combined 7.5 million viewers per day across TV and streaming, up 27% from last year and behind only 2020 — when the draft was among a handful of live sportscasts in a two-month span — as the largest audience on record for the event. (Keep in mind Nielsen did not track out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100% of markets until this year.)
After the opening two days were the second-most watched behind 2020, Saturday’s final day of coverage surpassed even that year to rank as the most-watched yet — averaging a combined 4.3 million viewers, up 43% from last year. Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders, son of Deion, was selected in the fifth round.
Sanders’ fall from an expected first round pick to the fifth round would seem to have clearly driven viewership for the final two days. Thursday’s opening round viewership increased 11 percent, but Friday and Saturday viewership surged by more than 40 percent. It is exceedingly rare for a highly-touted prospect to drop all the way out of the first round — both Johnny Manziel and Aaron Rodgers were late first round picks — much less go undrafted until day three.
Individually, viewership increased 52% on NFL Network (1.4M) and 22% on the ESPN family of networks (3.1M). NFL Network had its most-watched draft since 2017 and second-most watched on record, while the ESPN networks had their most-watched presentation since 2020.
As may go without saying, the NFL Draft far and away outperforms all other events in the genre. Last year’s NBA Draft ranks a distant second with a two-day average of 2.7 million, the recent WNBA Draft averaged 1.25 million, and the drafts of Major League Baseball and the NHL failed to crack the million viewer mark.