via ESPN press release:
ESPN NFL Draft Telecast Attracts Record 36.7 Million Viewers
Traffic on ESPN Mobile Web Site Up 145% from 2008
The NFL Draft on ESPN and ESPN2 this past weekend was the most-viewed in ESPN’s 30-year history of televising the event with 36.7 million people tuned in to at least part of the 15 1/2 hours of NFL Draft coverage. It was the highest number of total NFL Draft viewers in ESPN history — an increase of 5% over last year’s 34.8 million and just above the previous high of 36.3 million viewers in 2006.
ESPN’s five hours of Day 1 coverage on Saturday, April 25 (4-9 p.m. ET), was seen in an average of 3.896 million households and garnered a 4.0 HH rating, according to Nielsen Media Research. Both figures represent an increase of 3% over last year’s event which averaged 3.785 million households and a 3.9 rating.
Highest-Rated Markets for ESPN’s Saturday coverage (4-9 p.m. ET):
1. Columbus, Ohio (7.4)
2. New Orleans (6.9)
3. Cleveland (6.8)
4. Milwaukee (6.2)
5. Indianapolis (6.2)
ESPN Digital Media
In addition to the television success on ESPN and ESPN2, traffic to NFL content on the ESPN Mobile Web site was up 145% from last year and views of video on ESPN.com were up 22% from the 2008 NFL Draft weekend. Visits to ESPN.com for the weekend increased 9% on Day 1 and 8% on Day 2, with fans spending nearly 25 minutes spent per visitor.
At a first glance, those highest rated market cities seem to have taken a pretty big economic punch in the gut. (at least, worse than the rest of us.) ?? Or maybe there is just more to do on the weekend in the east and west coast markets.
it makes sense that people in Cleveland would watch a lot of the draft because the browns kept trading down in round 1.
Ded, Here on the east coast it was the first really warm weekend in a long time. Plus you also had the baseball to contend with Yankees/Red Sox. I haven’t looked at but I’m guessing the NBA playoff numbers are bad.
no big deal. it helped that the draft took the entire weekend. day one was cool, but day two is a nightmare. i couldn’t watch no more than 30 seconds.
So is this viewers who watched at least — or just — six minutes? Non-duplicated viewers? Or just the same 3.67 million viewers tuning in ten times, six minutes at a time, over the course of the 15 hours?
These “millions of people tuned in to at least part of” numbers are always a bit suspect but in this case, with no average viewership stated, it is practically meaningless.
non-duplicated, at least six minutes. The first round (4 hour duration) averaged 5.058 million. The Sunday coverage, (9 hours and 36 minutes in duration) averaged 1.935 million. Those are just the ESPN numbers, and not ESPN2, which also offered some coverage.