The average viewing audience for Monday’s broadcast of Manchester United against Chelsea on NBCSN was 536,000. In comparison to previous Monday broadcasts of the Premier League during the early part of the season (August-December), it ranks as the number two all-time record, second only to the 540,000 who watched Manchester United against Tottenham in August 2011 on ESPN2.
To put that into perspective, the telecast was the most watched sports program all day Monday in the 18-34 male age group. The match also marked NBCSN’s best weekday audience since the 2012 London Olympics. Viewership peaked at 682,000 viewers from 4:30-4:45 p.m.
NBC Sports Live Extra’s live stream of the match generated 3,207,658 live minutes and averaged 51.8 minutes per visit. Both are records for Premier League streaming on NBC Sports Live Extra and are comparable to many established U.S.-based sports streams.
The 3.2 million live minutes for the match, which began at 3 p.m. ET and required verification, surpassed NBC’s two NFL preseason games this year and every Notre Dame Football stream last season, both of which did not require verification of a cable/satellite/telco subscription. It also surpassed all NHL streams with the exception of Stanley Cup Final games. In live minutes, Manchester United-Chelsea was the second-highest NBCSN stream in NBC Sports Live Extra history, behind only Game 2 of the 2013 Stanley Cup Final (3,236,341).
In other news, the TV viewing audience for MLS’s game between Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers on ESPN2 drew 346,000 viewers on Sunday night (a 0.3 overnight rating).
