On Thursday, the NFL kicked off night one of the NFL Draft live from Detroit. A record 275,000 people attended, and it had its best viewing audience in three years.
According to numbers posted by Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp, ESPN had 5.6 million viewers, while ABC had 4.5 million and the NFL Network and other digital streaming had 1.6 million. Add those numbers to what ESPN Deportes did and it comes out to around 12.1 million. The NFL and Nielsen said that 34.3 million viewers tuned in at some point to watch the first round.
The figure for 2024 is up 6% over last year’s draft and is the highest since 2021’s 12.5 million. The record for the most-watched NFL Draft came during the pandemic in 2020 and hit 15.3 million.
According to Karp, ABC had the largest increase as it featured the College GameDay crew including the newest member, former Alabama head coach Nick Saban.
