ESPN's January/February/March period was buoyed by the NFL Wild Card and Divisional rounds, the CFP, college basketball’s regular season, NHL games, NBA games and more. NWSL via Getty Images
ESPN drew its best Q1 primetime viewership on record, with the January/February/March period buoyed by the NFL Wild Card and Divisional rounds, the CFP, college basketball’s regular season, NHL games, NBA games and more. ESPN alone averaged 2.5 million viewers in primetime over the three months, up 10% from the same period in 2025. The total-day audience was 937,000 viewers for ESPN, up 8%. January was ESPN’s second-best month on record (behind only January 2015), while the cable channel had its best February and March since 2019. ESPN2, meanwhile had its best Q1 since 2019.
NBC drew 3 million viewers for the final round of the Valero Texas Open last weekend, marking the PGA Tour event’s second-best Sunday figure since 1999. Only the 2021 final round was better (3.4 million).
Prime Video drew 1.6 million viewers for Lakers-Thunder last Thursday, and excluding Black Friday or Emirates NBA Cup games, that’s the platform’s best NBA game this season.
The NCAA D-II Men’s Basketballl Championship, an event that CBS Sports gets as part of its D-I men’s deal, drew 1.17 million viewers for Lander-Gannon on the broadcast network on Sunday, up big from just 648,000 viewers last year (Nova Southeastern-Cal State Dominguez Hills. It’s the best figure for the game since CBS drew 1.38 million in 2022 for Northwest Missouri-Augusta.
The debut of the PBA on CBS drew 672,000 viewers on Saturday.
The chart below lists viewership figures for select recent sports telecasts.