The National Football League announced an unduplicated audience of 54.4 million viewers for the 2023 NFL Draft with an average audience of 6.0 million viewers, up 12% from last year.
The opening round combined for an average of 11.29 million viewers, a 13% increase annually and marking the third-highest total audience on-record. The total unduplicated audience for the first night was measured to be 34.2 million viewers, a 2% increase from last year. All three days of the NFL Draft also saw improvement in terms of the average audience on television and digital platforms compared to last year, and 312,000 people attended the event in Kansas City. For the sake of comparison, in 2022, 300,000 people attended the draft in Las Vegas when the first overall pick was made by the Jacksonville Jaguars and the team selected edge Travon Walker.
This year’s draft had a strong appeal in the opening round because of the wide array of star quarterbacks. In fact, three of the four draft picks were quarterbacks (Bryce Young; C.J. Stroud; Anthony Richardson). Last year, only one quarterback was selected in the first round of the draft – Kenny Pickett by the Pittsburgh Steelers – and traditionally, drafts with several quarterbacks as top picks have accumulated higher ratings. The highest-rated combined audience for the first night of the NFL Draft came in 2020 when it was executed remotely (15.26 million), and among adults aged 18-49, a rating metric of 3.5.
Additionally, the opening night of the NFL Draft attained a higher sum of average viewers than several prominent sporting events such as the Stanley Cup Final; Indianapolis 500; French Open; and Game 2 and 3 of the 2022 World Series. The Walt Disney Company just completed its fifth consecutive year of broadcasting the NFL Draft over multiple networks, including ESPN, ABC and NFL Network.
