ESPN has made huge investments in talent in recent years to further separate itself from the pack of competitors trailing the Worldwide Leader in Sports. And in 2025, the gap only grew.<\/p>\n
Bristol is looking back on 2025 as one of the most impactful and successful years in company history. And at the forefront of that success is their daily studio lineup with stars new and old leading the way.<\/p>\n
The highlights from the ESPN announcement<\/a> show ratings growth across the board. Among the most notable is that the trio of Get Up,\u00a0First Take, and\u00a0The Pat McAfee Show\u00a0all set ratings records, scoring their most-watched years at the network. Of course, the success also comes as ESPN canceled\u00a0Around the Horn<\/a>, which was a part of that lineup for many years.<\/p>\n But ESPN\u2019s success goes beyond its core daily shows, as SportsCenter\u00a0posted gains all throughout the day, and\u00a0NFL Live\u00a0and\u00a0NBA Today\u00a0also rose in viewership.\u00a0Finally, the mainstay of\u00a0Pardon the Interruption\u00a0secured its most successful year since 2019.<\/p>\n The 7 a.m.\u00a0SportsCenter\u00a0delivered its most-watched year since 2019, up 5% year-over-year (YOY). Jimmy Pitaro and company certainly have to be happy with these results. Of course, the caveat is that sports viewership has been the biggest benefactor of Nielsen\u2019s new Big Data measurement system. But most of those games have been centered on live sporting events. The fact that ESPN is seeing growth universally for its daily lineup as well is highly encouraging.<\/p>\n And what\u2019s most important is that this viewership growth comes at a time when ESPN is coming off its most transformative year ever in 2025<\/a>. The company has struck an equity deal with the NFL<\/a>, launched its DTC streaming service, and had to battle through a major dispute with YouTube TV. You can certainly have your qualms with some of ESPN\u2019s decision-making<\/a>, especially when it comes to a content perspective, but there\u2019s no doubting that from the business side, they seem to be on their way to a soft landing (as long as everything promised goes according to plan<\/a>) through one of the most complicated environments in sports and media history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN has made huge investments in talent in recent years to further separate itself from the pack of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,97420,10849,54939,3146,92],"class_list":["post-405328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-first-take","tag-get-up","tag-sportscenter","tag-the-pat-mcafee-show","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGet Up, hosted by Mike Greenberg, recorded its most-watched year ever, averaging 424,000 viewers, up 10% YOY.\u00a0The show has recorded four straight years of YOY growth.
\nFirst Take, featuring commentator and executive producer Stephen A. Smith, also had a record-setting year, averaging\u00a0517,000 viewers, up 6% YOY.
\nThe Pat McAfee Show\u00a0posted its most-watched year since the daily show debuted on ESPN in 2023, finishing up 8% YOY (linear and digital).
\nThe 2\u20133 p.m. SportsCenter delivered its best performance since it began in 2023, finishing up 20% YOY.
\nNBA Today, hosted by Malika Andrews, delivered the best NBA daily studio performance since 2018, up 16% YOY.
\nNFL Live,\u00a0hosted by Laura Rutledge, posted its best year since 2016, up 18% YOY. When accounting for football season only,\u00a0NFL Live also posted 18% YOY growth<\/a>, including increases in key demos such as youth (P2-17) and amongst females, growing 78% and 48%, respectively.
\nThe 5 p.m.\u00a0SportsCenter\u00a0delivered four straight months of year-over-year growth to close out 2025, up 10% vs. last year.
\nPTI,\u00a0ESPN\u2019s most-viewed weekday studio show, averaged 679,000 viewers \u2013 its best year since 2019, up 5% YOY.
\nThe 6 p.m.\u00a0SportsCenter\u00a0delivered its most-watched year since 2015, up 16% YOY.
\nThe 11 p.m.\u00a0SportsCenter\u00a0posted its best year since 2019, up 17% YOY.
\nSportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt\u00a0had its best year since 2022.
\nThe 1 a.m.\u00a0SportsCenter\u00a0was up 11% YOY.<\/p>\n