Sports
Premier League Drives Record Viewers For NBCSN and Streaming App
Stamford, CT
NBC Sports Network and NBC Sports Live Extra set new highs with coverage of Monday afternoon’s Manchester United-Chelsea Premier League match.
NBC Sports Network’s telecast averaged 536,000 viewers – tops for an NBCSN Premier League match this season and ranking No. 2 all-time among weekday, early season (prior to December) Premier League matches on U.S. television (540,000 for Manchester United-Tottenham, 8/22/11 on ESPN2).
The match also marked NBCSN’s best weekday audience since the 2012 London Olympics. Viewership peaked at 682,000 viewers from 4:30-4:45 p.m.
Among Men 18-34, NBCSN’s Premier League average audience (147,000) topped all Monday sporting events – finishing +18 percent above the second-most watched telecast in the demo (Cincinnati-St. Louis MLB game in primetime on ESPN; 125,000 average viewers).
NBC Sports Live Extra’s live stream of the match generated 3,207,658 live minutes and averaged 51.8 minutes per visit. Both are records for Premier League streaming on NBC Sports Live Extra and are comparable to many established U.S.-based sports streams.
The 3.2 million live minutes for the match, which began at 3 p.m. ET and required verification, surpassed NBC’s two NFL preseason games this year and every Notre Dame Football stream last season, both of which did not require verification of a cable/satellite/telco subscription. It also surpassed all NHL streams with the exception of Stanley Cup Final games. In live minutes, Manchester United-Chelsea was the second-highest NBCSN stream in NBC Sports Live Extra history, behind only Game 2 of the 2013 Stanley Cup Final (3,236,341).
NBC Sports Live Extra, the NBC Sports Group’s live streaming product for desktop, mobile devices and tablets, is offered by nine of the 10 largest cable/satellite/telco providers, plus many others. For a complete list of providers, click here.
NBC Sports Group’s exclusive Premier League coverage continues with a full weekend slate beginning Saturday, Aug. 31 at 7 a.m. ET on NBCSN with Premier League Live, followed by Manchester City-Hull City at 7:45 a.m.