ran a promotional campaign in the mid-2000s called “Without Sports” that posited the world would be less interesting and less connected in the absence of athletic competition (and, of course, ESPN’s exhaustive coverage of it). The 2024 version of that campaign might go something like, “Without sports, would anyone be watching cable?” The answer is yes — but in far smaller numbers than in a landscape where live sports are abundantly available via cable and satellite providers. Nielsen’s seven-day ratings for the 2023-24 TV season show sports dominating the top of the rankings among all viewers and the key ad-sales demographic of adults 18-49.
In total viewers, live sports telecasts — led by ESPN’s with 7.38 million viewers (not including simulcasts on ABC) — capture nine of the top 10 spots and 12 of the top 20 among primetime cable shows, counting titles with at least three telecasts. NBA playoffs coverage on ESPN and , Major League Baseball’s postseason and the NCAA women’s basketball tournament all rank in the top 10.
It’s not until the No. 10 spot that a non-sports show, Channel’s , shows up. Three more sports programs come ahead of the second non-sports show in the top 20, ‘s .
News programming takes four of the final six spots. Removing sports from the ledger puts and in the top two spots, but their viewer averages — 3.14 million and 2.
77 million — are less than half of the top sports events. (For comparison, those two shows would rank 7.
