The 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay, Wis. finished as the second most-watched iteration of the offseason event to date, averaging 7.5 million viewers on ESPN, ABC, NFL Network, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and digital channels. The three-day, seven-round venture, however, featured the storyline surrounding the precipitous slide of Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders into the fifth round.
In the months leading up to the Draft, Sanders was projected to be among the top selections, but he ended up sliding to the 144th overall pick made by the Cleveland Browns. Following the first round, which proliferated by 11% year-over-year to average 13.6 million viewers, studio shows on ESPN garnered strong viewership the following day, according to a recent report from Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal.
The Friday, April 25 edition of Get Up featuring host Mike Greenberg accrued 618,000 viewers, marking its best Friday episode after the first round of the NFL Draft in show history. Two hours later, First Take with featured commentator and executive producer Stephen A. Smith and host Molly Qerim elicited an average of 705,000 viewers, also representing the best Friday audience surrounding the NFL Draft. These viewership figures were confirmed by ESPN to Barrett Media.
Later in the day, the on-site edition of NFL Live in Green Bay featuring Laura Rutledge, Ryan Clark, Mina Kimes, Dan Orlovsky and Marcus Spears reportedly averaged 521,000 viewers, indicative of a 25% year-over-year rise from the same show last year. The 5 p.m. EST edition of College GameDay featuring Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and Nick Saban is reported to have averaged 601,000 viewers for the day, the second-best NFL Draft Friday audience for the show in history and up 44% from the previous year. Over its three days of NFL Draft coverage, ESPN, ABC and ESPN2 reportedly averaged 6.2 million viewers, representing a 22% increase from the previous year.
The reported viewership success across the NFL Draft coverage and studio programs comes after ESPN registered its strongest first-quarter viewership since 2017, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. A record-setting January was included therein, which represented the most-watched month for ESPN for the entire year since 2015. Combined with sports programming airing on ABC, fans consumed 145.1 billion minutes of ESPN content, more than any other Nielsen-measured first quarter over the last 13 years.
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