A Decade of Data Supports Sports’ Domination of Broadcast TV

For the past decade, Variety TV editor Michael Schneider has painstakingly tallied the most watched telecasts and television networks according to year-end data from Nielsen. While this treasure trove of statistics contains countless gems documenting TV’s changing landscape, one trend immediately sticks out: Americans love watching sports on TV.

While shows such as “60 Minutes” and “NCIS” still bring in viewers, sports programs have continued to dominate the airwaves post-pandemic, claiming 74 of the top 100 shows in 2024 — the highest levels in the past decade.

And as viewers cut the cord over the years and prestige scripted shows moved to streaming, that love of sports is single-handedly keeping broadcast TV afloat more than ever.

Sporting events were consistently the most-watched telecasts between 2015 and 2024. The NFL and college football regularly filled most of the top 10 slots in total viewership, with the Super Bowl being the No. 1 telecast for a decade straight and the Olympics ranking high in the years they took place.

Still, there were historically at least a few non-sports telecasts to crack the top 10, namely awards broadcasts including the Oscars or Grammys or shows that landed the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot.

But there seems to have been a shift in the years since streaming’s rise, an earth-stopping pandemic and two strikes that brought scripted TV to a halt, as 2024 is the third year in a row that the top 10 most-watched telecasts were all sports.

Looking at the full top 100 lists of the past several years paints a clearer picture of viewers’ increasing shift towards sports. From 2015 to 2019, the wider lists were populated by broadcast mainstays including “60 Minutes,” multiseason crime dramas, game shows, crowd-pleasing sitcoms and prestige-TV era shows such as “Game of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead.”

Still, the split between sports and non-sports telecasts shifted at the start of the 2020s. While 70 of the 100 most watched shows in 2020 were non-sports programs, that number was nearly halved the following year.

In general, 2021 was a rough year for non-sports TV, with countless delayed productions still catching up and sports leagues (including the Olympics) bouncing back faster.

Meanwhile, the scripted shows that dominate pop culture — à la “Game of Thrones” or “The Walking Dead” — are increasingly coming from streaming. Variety even began including the likes of “Squid Game” in the year-end winners despite TV ratings lists not being for streaming originals.

The one program millions of Americans still consistently watch on broadcast TV is the Super Bowl, which itself has seen a boost in ratings over the past few years. And the gap has only widened compared with the Oscars, still the overall top non-sports telecast over the past decade.

Both shows saw viewership dip in 2021, and while the Oscars has managed an impressive 94% increase in total views from 2021 to 2024 versus the Super Bowl’s 30% increase in the same period, the latter’s audience still dwarfs the former even on an off year.

The Oscars’ place in the top non-sports spot isn’t nearly as ironclad as the Super Bowl’s No. 1 spot, either. Even before its 2021 all-time low ratings, the awards show was outpaced by NBC’s “This Is Us” in 2018, Fox’s “The Masked Singer” in 2020 — both of which benefited from the post-Bowl time slot — and the second Presidential Debate last September.

Outside of the Super Bowl, sports have allowed the “Big 4” broadcast networks — CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox — to remain most-watched networks for the full decade. Apart from CBS, which still finds solid ratings with crime dramas, sitcoms and the perennial “60 Minutes” (though it does air the AFC NFL games and occasionally the Super Bowl), these networks now almost completely rely on broadcasting sports to bring in viewers. ABC has its connection to ESPN, Fox has the NFL’s NFC games and the MLB World Series, and NBC has both a good chunk of NFL games and the Olympics.

Still, sports can only pick up so much of the slack left by a lack of must-see scripted broadcast TV. Even as the Big 4 have claimed the top spots for the past decade, their total viewership has whittled away across the board as viewers turn to streaming and the internet for entertainment. Although CBS was the top network in 2024, for instance, its 5.1 million views would have knocked it down to a distant 5th place in 2014.

To make matters worse for broadcasters, streaming has now started poaching sports broadcasting rights after spending the last decade taking over scripted TV. Most recently, Netflix brought in over 60 million views across its two NFL Christmas games, a promising step further into the live sports world as the platform becomes the new home of the WWE this year. And Amazon made history in 2022 as the first streamer to make the ratings list thanks to nabbing the rights to NFL Thursday Night Football.

Sports might be the main reason why most people still tune into broadcast TV at this point, but it’s unclear how much longer they can rely on that draw. Even the Olympics are now streamed on Peacock alongside airing on NBC, while the Super Bowl will be streaming on Fubo — also known as Hulu as of this week.