While there was much debate about Shane Gillis’ performance as host of the ESPY Awards on Wednesday night, his presence did not exactly draw a new audience for the annual sports awards show. According to Sports Media Watch, the 2024 ESPY Awards drew modest ratings once again, continuing a trend of diminished viewership in recent years.
Airing Wednesday night on ABC, the annual sports award show averaged a 1.3 rating and 2.18 million viewers. The figure marks one of the lowest totals in the event’s history, outperforming only the COVID-impacted broadcasts of 2020 and 2021 and drawing the lowest viewership since 2011. It was also the second-lowest non-pandemic viewership since the event’s inception, trailing only the 1998 edition of the annual awards show which was hosted by Norm Macdonald (2.10 million).
Compared to last year’s telecast, which aired on a Thursday night and faced a delay due to an ABC News special report, the 2025 ESPYs saw a 22% drop in ratings and a 17% dip in total viewership. Even when stacked against 2022 — the last time the ESPYs aired in its traditional post-MLB All-Star Game slot — the show still lost ground, down a tick in ratings and off 7% in total viewers from 2.3 million.
Since returning to its pre-pandemic summer slot in 2022, the ESPYs have hovered around the 2 million viewer mark consistently. That’s a significant falloff from the five-year stretch preceding the pandemic, when the show consistently averaged over 3 million viewers, including nearly 8 million during its ABC debut in 2013 and 3.9 million in 2019.
The decline places the ESPYs behind other major sports award presentations in terms of viewership. The NFL Honors, which aired in February across FOX and NFL Network, drew 2.3 million viewers. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Heisman Trophy Presentation last December reached 2.52 million viewers.
This year’s ESPY awards were held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Gillis opening monologue drew much praise and criticism as reactions were mixed to the injection of political humor and sports intersected drawing few laughs from the in-person audience.
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