- NFL Playoff Games and College Football Playoff Drive ESPN to Multi-Year Highs in Various Viewership Categories
ESPN’s January 2025 viewership propelled to the network’s highest consumption levels in a decade, one of the many impressive results across a monumental month for the company. The viewership achievements were a direct result of the company’s industry-leading sports rights portfolio, including multiple NFL playoff games and the College Football Playoff.
Highlights of a signature month:
- Best in a Decade: ESPN averaged 1.6 million viewers throughout the entire month of January, the cable network’s best average minute audience for ANY month dating back to January of 2015 (120 months). Compared to January 2024, the average minute audience represents a 38% increase.
- Eight Year High: Combining all of ESPN’s programming with sports programming on ABC, more minutes were watched by fans than ANY month since January of 2017 (96 months). In total, 81.4 billion minutes of sports content were watched on ESPN and ABC.
- Approaching Half of Sports Viewership: ESPN, across all its Nielsen-rated networks, accounted for 42% of all sports viewership for the month, with its nearest competitor coming in at 20%. ESPN, the single network, accounted for 29% of sports viewership on its own, besting its nearest competitor by 9%.
Please note: January 2025 is defined by Nielsen as Dec. 30 to January 26. All historical comparison use Nielsen’s defined January month.
Media Contact:
Derek Volner: Derek.Volner@ESPN.com
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