2025/2026 Broadcast Season Sports & Special Events Ranking

When analyzing television ratings, it is important to remember that broadcast networks operate on a traditional broadcast calendar (running from September through late summer, much like an academic school year). This report specifically tracks primetime programming metrics (measured primarily by Adults 18–49 Live+SD averages through September 20, 2026).

Because this dataset is strictly filtered for primetime evening hours, it highlights how major sports leagues, special events, and niche broadcasts compete directly against traditional evening entertainment like dramas and comedies.

A quick note about World Cup matches - kickoffs were mostly not in primetime.

2025/2026 Broadcast Season Sports & Special Events Ranking

(Ranked by Live+SD Total Viewers / Persons 2+)

1. NBC Sunday Night Football (NBC) – 20,440,000 viewers (Demo: 4.73)

2. Monday Night Football on ABC (ABC) – 11,574,000 viewers (Demo: 2.14)

3. The OT [FOX NFL Postgame] (FOX) – 11,184,000 viewers (Demo: 2.56)

4. FIFA Men WC Postgame (FOX) – 10,312,000 viewers (Demo: 2.64)

5. FIFA Men WC Rain Delay (FOX) – 9,105,000 viewers (Demo: 2.73)

6. FIFA Men WC Today - WK (FOX) – 8,542,000 viewers (Demo: 2.41)

7. Saturday Night Football (ABC) – 7,668,000 viewers (Demo: 1.66)

8. Football Night in America Part 2 (NBC) – 5,652,000 viewers

9. FIFA Men WC Today - Pri (FOX) – 4,626,000 viewers

10. FOX NASCAR Cup Series (FOX) – 4,481,000 viewers

11. Notre Dame Football (NBC) – 3,988,000 viewers

12. NBC B1G Sat Night Football (NBC) – 3,729,000 viewers

13. NASCAR Cup Series Race (NBC) – 3,131,000 viewers

14. NBC NBA Sun NT Bskbl (NBC) – 2,899,000 viewers

15. FOX IndyCar NICS - Rain (FOX) – 2,878,000 viewers

16. NBC WNBA Sun Bskbl (NBC) – 2,781,000 viewers

17. FOX Sat Baseball - Rain Delay (FOX) – 2,658,000 viewers

18. NBC MLB Sun NT Basebl (NBC) – 2,485,000 viewers

19. FOX CFB Fri - Big10 Prime (FOX) – 2,421,000 viewers

20. NBA Saturday Primetime (ABC) – 2,276,000 viewers

21. FOX Saturday Baseball (FOX) – 2,019,000 viewers

22. FOX CFB - Big10 Prime (FOX) – 1,970,000 viewers

23. NBC MLB Rain Delay (NBC) – 1,890,000 viewers

24. FOX C. Hoops - Big10 Prime (FOX) – 1,565,000 viewers

25. Mission Foods NHRA Series (FOX) – 1,177,000 viewers

26. Women's NCAA Volleyball - Friday (FOX) – 943,000 viewers (Demo: 0.18)

27. MLS Soccer - Fri Prime (FOX) – 587,000 viewers (Demo: 0.12)

28. MLS Soccer - Sun Evening (FOX) – 578,000 viewers (Demo: 0.13)

29. MLS Soccer - Sun Prime (FOX) – 331,000 viewers (Demo: 0.08)

30. LIV Golf - Sunday (FOX) – 320,000 viewers

31. MLS Soccer - Prime (FOX) – 248,000 viewers (Demo: 0.06)

32. AVP Volleyball League (CW) – ~231k – 234k viewers

Key Takeaways

• The Football Hegemony: NFL windows (Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, and postgame coverage like The OT) completely dominate the top tier, pulling anywhere from 11 million to over 20 million viewers.

• The Volleyball Factor: Friday night Women's NCAA Volleyball pulls a healthy 943,000 viewers in its primetime slot, placing it ahead of standard regional MLS telecasts, golf blocks, and niche motorsports.

• The Soccer Landscape: Because this report isolates primetime slots, MLS matches land in the 248k to 587k viewer range, aligning with specialized weekend sports windows and auxiliary programming.

Massive Major League Soccer Improvement!

 

Major League Soccer has increased the length of their YouTube highlight videos from 7 minutes to a MASSIVE! 10 minutes. See link below for the highlight reel from SKC vs. THE CREW!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4J3EPNEvAg

This may seem insignificant to some of you out there in MLS Village, especially in an era when leagues like the Premiership and La Liga have gone from 10 & 12 minute highlight videos to 15 & 20 minute highlight videos over the last few years.

But, put your thinking cap on.

In these weird and confusing days of internet infancy, finding qualified YouTube videographers and the proper software to construct these incredibly complicated highlight reels, not to mention scraping together the money to pay for such extravagance, must be a gargantuan task. Even... MASSIVE!

Sooo, tip your hat to MLS. You love your club, and now their highlights are the best!

The Decline of TV, Impact on Soccer

With over 60 different soccer leagues and events scheduled for US TV in 2024, fans can enjoy everything from the excitement of the African Cup of Nations Qualifiers to the skill of the US Women's National Team.

For anyone under the age of 30 or so, it may seem like it's always been this way but it hasn't. The rise of sports runs parallel to the rise in cable and satellite television (or Pay-TV). It went from 50 million households in the 1990's to nearly 100 million as recently as 2014. With nothing to compete with, sports thrived in this quarter-century timeframe via massive TV deals and advertising.

THE PARTY IS OVER

Now that we are halfway through the 2020's we clearly see the shift away from old model and into a new world. Yes, people still watch and pay for TV, they just do it much less.

Another way to put this is that people aren't just "cutting the cord," they are cutting out watching TV altogether.

Social Media, Video Games (incl. mobile), YouTube, and various other streaming apps have all taken away from TV viewing habits that we can trace back to the 1950s.

This shift has already by and large claimed the lives of broadcast shows. Live sports appeared resilient up until the last couple of years. Even foundational changes in Nielsen measurement systems can't hide the erosion of viewership.

Now we have fragmentation. Smaller audiences.

This will lead to only a handful of leagues/events surviving on TV over the next five years by fighting for tv scraps. Things like the NFL, College Football, and March Madness will be what draws viewers to live linear events. The next tier (NBA, NHL, MLB) will be fighting for air now that it's clear the TV audience is half of what it was 10 years ago.

For soccer? Fans will seek out large international events. The Premier League, as well. But Liga MX, MLS, NWSL, and the smaller leagues like the USL and various Central American Leagues will be relegated to niche status on streaming services that pull in figures that measure five digits or less. Gone are the days of average viewership numbers of 300k on linear networks like ESPN, TUDN, FS1.

HOW TO SURVIVE

The NFL is already doing it. 

1. Get your live product on Netflix, YouTube, and/or Amazon. These three companies pull just as much screen time as all of Pay-TV in the US right now. Five years from now, it will be double that (if Pay-TV still exists at all).

2. Fight for broadcast windows. 

The future of sports will look like how Amazon does Thursday Night Football and how Netflix did the Tyson v. Paul fight.

FINAL THOUGHT

In the very near future "TV" will be Netflix, YT, and Amazon in the same way we see broadcast networks like NBC, TNT, ESPN, ABC, FOX, etc now.

The pie is getting smaller. The existence of all these sporting events south of the NFL will rely on other forms of revenue and not TV.

Google Trends: Liga MX, MLS, PL

An updated look at Google Trends breakdown of men's league popularity by metro region in the United States.

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The Premier League leads in 85% of markets. Liga MX 14%, MLS <1%.

Interest
Google Trends, Compared breakdown by Market/Metro Region
Category: All categories
(3/30/23 - 3/30/24)
DMA	MLS	LIGA MX	PREMIER LEAGUE
Abilene-Sweetwater TX	11%	41%	48%
Albany GA	11%	49%	40%
Albany-Schenectady-Troy NY	12%	5%	83%
Albuquerque-Santa Fe NM	9%	42%	49%
Alexandria LA	14%	33%	53%
Alpena MI	2%		98%
Amarillo TX	7%	57%	36%
Anchorage AK	30%	11%	59%
Atlanta GA	17%	20%	63%
Augusta GA	15%	24%	61%
Austin TX	16%	35%	49%
Bakersfield CA	7%	71%	22%
Baltimore MD	10%	8%	82%
Bangor ME	15%	4%	81%
Baton Rouge LA	12%	34%	54%
Beaumont-Port Arthur TX	7%	61%	32%
Bend OR	21%	18%	61%
Billings, MT	20%	13%	67%
Biloxi-Gulfport MS	14%	23%	63%
Binghamton NY	10%	2%	88%
Birmingham AL	14%	31%	55%
Bluefield-Beckley-Oak Hill WV	19%	12%	69%
Boise ID	14%	34%	52%
Boston MA-Manchester NH	14%	4%	82%
Bowling Green KY	13%	18%	69%
Buffalo NY	13%	4%	83%
Burlington VT-Plattsburgh NY	12%	2%	86%
Butte-Bozeman MT	12%	18%	70%
Casper-Riverton WY	9%	35%	56%
Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City & Dubuque IA	14%	15%	71%
Champaign & Springfield-Decatur IL	13%	16%	71%
Charleston SC	13%	18%	69%
Charleston-Huntington WV	21%	9%	70%
Charlotte NC	21%	20%	59%
Charlottesville VA	8%	10%	82%
Chattanooga TN	14%	34%	52%
Cheyenne WY-Scottsbluff NE	10%	43%	47%
Chicago IL	9%	44%	47%
Chico-Redding CA	12%	49%	39%
Cincinnati OH	46%	8%	46%
Clarksburg-Weston WV	14%	11%	75%
Cleveland-Akron (Canton) OH	18%	10%	72%
Colorado Springs-Pueblo CO	16%	27%	57%
Columbia SC	14%	21%	65%
Columbia-Jefferson City MO	24%	11%	65%
Columbus GA	15%	23%	62%
Columbus OH	33%	7%	60%
Columbus-Tupelo-West Point MS	14%	37%	49%
Corpus Christi TX	8%	63%	29%
Dallas-Ft. Worth TX	9%	41%	50%
Davenport IA-Rock Island-Moline IL	13%	29%	58%
Dayton OH	29%	12%	59%
Denver CO	12%	31%	57%
Des Moines-Ames IA	12%	23%	65%
Detroit MI	10%	14%	76%
Dothan AL	19%	28%	53%
Duluth MN-Superior WI	21%	7%	72%
El Paso TX	5%	77%	18%
Elmira NY	12%	3%	85%
Erie PA	16%	7%	77%
Eugene OR	18%	20%	62%
Eureka CA	14%	25%	61%
Evansville IN	18%	26%	56%
Fairbanks AK	19%	5%	76%
Fargo-Valley City ND	14%	16%	70%
Flint-Saginaw-Bay City MI	18%	7%	75%
Florence-Myrtle Beach SC	13%	30%	57%
Fresno-Visalia CA	6%	70%	24%
Ft. Myers-Naples FL	14%	23%	63%
Ft. Smith-Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers AR	12%	38%	50%
Ft. Wayne IN	13%	29%	58%
Gainesville FL	14%	8%	78%
Glendive MT			100%
Grand Junction-Montrose CO	9%	49%	42%
Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek MI	11%	22%	67%
Great Falls MT	26%		74%
Green Bay-Appleton WI	13%	30%	57%
Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem NC	11%	31%	58%
Greenville-New Bern-Washington NC	14%	28%	58%
Greenville-Spartanburg SC-Asheville NC-Anderson SC	13%	25%	62%
Greenwood-Greenville MS	12%	41%	47%
Harlingen-Weslaco-Brownsville-McAllen TX	3%	85%	12%
Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York PA	15%	10%	75%
Harrisonburg VA	8%	17%	75%
Hartford & New Haven CT	9%	7%	84%
Hattiesburg-Laurel MS	10%	34%	56%
Helena MT	23%	11%	66%
Honolulu HI	18%	8%	74%
Houston TX	9%	47%	44%
Huntsville-Decatur (Florence) AL	16%	33%	51%
Idaho Falls-Pocatello ID	12%	37%	51%
Indianapolis IN	9%	22%	69%
Jackson MS	15%	29%	56%
Jackson TN	11%	34%	55%
Jacksonville FL	15%	12%	73%
Johnstown-Altoona PA	14%	3%	83%
Jonesboro AR	12%	42%	46%
Joplin MO-Pittsburg KS	20%	32%	48%
Juneau AK	18%	11%	71%
Kansas City MO	29%	21%	50%
Knoxville TN	15%	24%	61%
La Crosse-Eau Claire WI	18%	26%	56%
Lafayette IN	11%	10%	79%
Lafayette LA	10%	37%	53%
Lake Charles LA	12%	34%	54%
Lansing MI	13%	8%	79%
Laredo TX	3%	85%	12%
Las Vegas NV	10%	45%	45%
Lexington KY	15%	25%	60%
Lima OH	26%	20%	54%
Lincoln & Hastings-Kearney NE	11%	33%	56%
Little Rock-Pine Bluff AR	12%	40%	48%
Los Angeles CA	11%	47%	42%
Louisville KY	13%	19%	68%
Lubbock TX	10%	42%	48%
Macon GA	18%	31%	51%
Madison WI	11%	16%	73%
Mankato MN	15%	17%	68%
Marquette MI	27%	4%	69%
Medford-Klamath Falls OR	15%	40%	45%
Memphis TN	11%	33%	56%
Meridian MS	16%	22%	62%
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale FL	21%	8%	71%
Milwaukee WI	10%	35%	55%
Minneapolis-St. Paul MN	16%	12%	72%
Minot-Bismarck-Dickinson(Williston) ND	14%	31%	55%
Missoula MT	17%	5%	78%
Mobile AL-Pensacola (Ft. Walton Beach) FL	15%	22%	63%
Monroe LA-El Dorado AR	10%	37%	53%
Monterey-Salinas CA	6%	68%	26%
Montgomery (Selma) AL	17%	31%	52%
Nashville TN	24%	25%	51%
New Orleans LA	13%	22%	65%
New York NY	11%	12%	77%
Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News VA	13%	11%	76%
North Platte NE	23%	26%	51%
Odessa-Midland TX	4%	66%	30%
Oklahoma City OK	10%	42%	48%
Omaha NE	10%	30%	60%
Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne FL	22%	11%	67%
Ottumwa IA-Kirksville MO	11%	30%	59%
Paducah KY-Cape Girardeau MO-Harrisburg-Mount Vernon IL	21%	28%	51%
Palm Springs CA	10%	61%	29%
Panama City FL	15%	16%	69%
Parkersburg WV	33%	6%	61%
Peoria-Bloomington IL	16%	17%	67%
Philadelphia PA	16%	12%	72%
Phoenix AZ	10%	43%	47%
Pittsburgh PA	14%	6%	80%
Portland OR	22%	30%	48%
Portland-Auburn ME	14%	1%	85%
Presque Isle ME	24%		76%
Providence RI-New Bedford MA	17%	7%	76%
Quincy IL-Hannibal MO-Keokuk IA	20%	17%	63%
Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville) NC	9%	20%	71%
Rapid City SD	20%	18%	62%
Reno NV	9%	57%	34%
Richmond-Petersburg VA	11%	12%	77%
Roanoke-Lynchburg VA	12%	16%	72%
Rochester MN-Mason City IA-Austin MN	12%	18%	70%
Rochester NY	11%	4%	85%
Rockford IL	8%	48%	44%
Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto CA	8%	52%	40%
Salisbury MD	14%	20%	66%
Salt Lake City UT	21%	34%	45%
San Angelo TX	9%	55%	36%
San Antonio TX	8%	57%	35%
San Diego CA	10%	45%	45%
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose CA	9%	32%	59%
Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo CA	7%	55%	38%
Savannah GA	13%	33%	54%
Seattle-Tacoma WA	21%	18%	61%
Sherman TX-Ada OK	9%	50%	41%
Shreveport LA	10%	45%	45%
Sioux City IA	9%	45%	46%
Sioux Falls(Mitchell) SD	13%	23%	64%
South Bend-Elkhart IN	10%	35%	55%
Spokane WA	16%	35%	49%
Springfield MO	26%	20%	54%
Springfield-Holyoke MA	12%	3%	85%
St. Joseph MO	26%	17%	57%
St. Louis MO	49%	6%	45%
Syracuse NY	12%	2%	86%
Tallahassee FL-Thomasville GA	13%	20%	67%
Tampa-St. Petersburg (Sarasota) FL	15%	17%	68%
Terre Haute IN	15%	23%	62%
Toledo OH	21%	12%	67%
Topeka KS	24%	24%	52%
Traverse City-Cadillac MI	22%	9%	69%
Tri-Cities TN-VA	16%	20%	64%
Tucson (Sierra Vista) AZ	11%	34%	55%
Tulsa OK	12%	35%	53%
Twin Falls ID	6%	66%	28%
Tyler-Longview(Lufkin & Nacogdoches) TX	9%	56%	35%
Utica NY	12%	1%	88%
Victoria TX	12%	67%	21%
Waco-Temple-Bryan TX	10%	42%	48%
Washington DC (Hagerstown MD)	11%	9%	80%
Watertown NY	17%	4%	79%
Wausau-Rhinelander WI	21%	20%	59%
West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce FL	12%	14%	74%
Wheeling WV-Steubenville OH	19%	7%	74%
Wichita Falls TX & Lawton OK	10%	41%	49%
Wichita-Hutchinson KS	13%	42%	45%
Wilkes Barre-Scranton PA	18%	9%	73%
Wilmington NC	14%	19%	67%
Yakima-Pasco-Richland-Kennewick WA	9%	68%	23%
Youngstown OH	22%	10%	68%
Yuma AZ-El Centro CA	5%	75%	20%
Zanesville OH	43%		57%

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