ESPN’s live telecast of the Saturday, July 1, “Battle of Brisbane” (10 p.m. ET to 1 a.m. ET) delivered a 1.8 metered market rating according to Nielsen, making it the highest-rated fight on record for a cable network this decade.
The WBO World Welterweight Championship main event between Manny “Pac Man” Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KOs), the Filipino legend and boxing’s only eight-division world champion, against undefeated No. 1 contender and Brisbane’s favorite son Jeff “The Hornet” Horn (17-0-1, 11 KOs) (12 a.m. ET to 1 a.m. ET) delivered a 2.4 overnight rating. Horn defeated Pacquiao by a controversial unanimous decision.
Based on overnight Nielsen results, the “Battle of Brisbane” is likely to be the highest-rated fight on ESPN’s networks since the mid 1990’s.
Las Vegas was the top local market for the fight with a 4.0 metered market rating, including a 5.1 rating during the main event.
Metered Market Ratings for the Top Five Cities:
Rank
City
Rating
1
Las Vegas
4.0
2
Los Angeles
3.7
3
Raleigh-Durham
3.6
4
New Orleans
3.1
5
San Diego
3.0
Streaming results also broke ESPN records for boxing, making the fight the most-streamed boxing event on record for both the ESPN and ESPN Deportes networks. ESPN had a streaming average minute audience of 78K, 392K unique viewers, and 14.4 million total minutes. Based on all three measures, the fight was the most-streamed boxing event on record on ESPN’s networks. On ESPN Deportes, the fight had a streaming average minute audience of 1.4K, 7.8K unique viewers, and 253K total minutes streamed. Based on all three measures, the fight was the most-streamed boxing event on record on ESPN Deportes.
“The Battle of Brisbane” is available to stream now on the ESPN app. It will also re-air on ESPN2 tonight at 8 p.m. ET.