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The first month of 2025 saw ESPN record its highest viewership numbers in a decade, fueled by the NFL playoffs and the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

ESPN reported an average of 1.6 million viewers throughout the entire month of January, marking the network’s best average minute audience for any month dating back to January of 2015. It also represented a 39 percent year-over-year increase from January 2024.

Combining ESPN’s programming with ABC’s sports programming, the networks combined for 81.4 billion minutes of sports content watched — the most since January of 2017.

ESPN also reportedly that across all of it’s Nielsen-rated networks, it accounted for 42 percent of all sports viewership for the month. It’s nearest competitor logged 20 percent by comparison. On its own, ESPN accounted for 29 percent of all sports viewership for the month.

Nielsen defines its month of January as Dec. 30, 2024 to Jan. 26, 2025. That means viewership from the New Year’s Eve CFP game between Boise State and Penn State was included in the numbers, along with the three other quarterfinal games on Jan. 1.

ESPN also broadcast the two CFP semifinal and championship games.

–Field Level Media