Serena with the win, and the assist!
Serena Williams defeated No. 2 seed, Danka Kovinic, in her final US Open during opening night this past Monday, August 29th. Her victorious set peaked at 3.2 MILLION viewers, giving ESPN an audience nearly FOUR times more than in 2021.
Anticipated to be her farewell appearance, Serena did not disappoint. Her widely viewed match-up undoubtedly helped boost ESPN’s viewership throughout the day. Check out some of the official statistics below!
- The network averaged an ESPN first-day record of 1.7 million viewers for PrimeTime at the US Open presented by IBM (7 p.m. – 12:03 a.m. ET), an increase of 279% — nearly four-fold – over last year and up 40% over the previous high in 2019.
- The afternoon window on ESPN (noon – 7 p.m.) averaged the best for ESPN since its first year with exclusivity and first-ball-to-last-ball coverage in 2015 (680,000) with 626,000 viewers, up 44% from 2021.
- Combined, the total day average of 843,000 viewers was better than 2019’s previous best of 809,000 by 4%.
- Also noteworthy, Beyond television, Monday was the most-trafficked US Open Opening Day for ESPN Digital Properties on record, two million unique users.
