The Premier League continues to be a winner for NBCUniversal, with the world’s most watched soccer league scoring record ratings for NBC, Peacock and USA Network for the 2023/2024 season.
On Thursday, NBCU revealed that the last season of the Premier League broke a number of viewership records on its various platforms. The company said that for the 2023/2024 season, NBC Sports averaged 546,000 viewers per TV match window, meaning that it was the most-watched Premier League season ever in the U.S. Overall, the 2023/2024 season was up 4 percent from last season (527,000), and beat the previous record figure of 541,000 set in 2015-16, the season extreme long shots Leicester City won an improbable title.
Boosting viewership no doubt was the title race between Arsenal and Manchester City going down to the final games of the season, which NBC Sports dubbed “Championship Sunday.” The company said that collective viewership for the last day of the season, which saw all 10 Premier League games kick-off at the same time, hit nearly 3 million across Peacock, NBC, USA Network, CNBC, GOLF Channel, NBC Sports Digital, Telemundo, and Universo.
Underscoring how much interest there was in the 2023/2024 season, six of the seven most watched Premier League matches in U.S. history came in the season just ended. Moreover, the 2023/2024 season saw the first match ever (English language only) to top two million viewers, with the showdown of Manchester City-Arsenal hitting 2.12 million viewers on March 31, according to NBC Sports.
The Premier League has proved to be a boon for Peacock, with the streamer exceeding 1 million viewers for a match for the first time last season, with a record Average Minute Audience of 1.15 million viewers for Arsenal-Liverpool on Feb. 4, according to figures from NBC Sports. On March 3, Peacock topped the million mark again with 1.10 million viewers for the Manchester Derby game between Manchester City and Manchester United. For the season, NBC Sports says eight Peacock exclusive matches averaged at least 800,000 viewers, quadrupling the prior season.
NBC Sports added that Peacock exclusive matches accounted for the top three and eight of the nine most-streamed Premier League matches ever in the U.S. In all, Peacock viewers streamed 28 percent more live minutes of Premier League matches this season than last, according to the company.
NBC Sports has held exclusive U.S. rights to the Premier League since 2013 replacing Fox Sports who had held the rights from 1998 to 2013. NBC Sports’ current six-year contract with the English soccer league began in 2022 and is reportedly valued at $2.7 billion ($450 million a season) and runs through to the end of the 2027/28 season.
