Carlos Alcaraz (ATP Tour - Twitter)
The US Open 2022 was massively followed on the ESPN network and has seen ESPN’s third-best average viewership of all-time
The 2022 US Open on ESPN averaged 1.21 million viewers over the two weeks and nearly 168 hours of wall-to-wall live coverage, up 50% from last year and the third-best for ESPN since it gained exclusivity for the last of tennis’ four Majors each year in 2015. The audience was boosted during the first week by the widespread attention to Serena Williams – who was featured three times in prime time plus in a doubles match with her sister Venus – who most believe was playing her final tournament and in the second week by matches with Frances Tiafoe, Coco Gauff and eventual men’s champion, Carlos Alcaraz.
The semifinal between Alcaraz and Tiafoe on Friday, Sept. 9, averaged 2.96 million viewers – peaking at 3.6 million – for the five-plus hour telecast that started at 7 p.m. ET. That is up 66% from the equivalent telecast in 2021 and ranks as ESPN’s ninth biggest tennis audience on record. It is also ESPN’s sixth best from the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. (coverage began in 2009). It is ESPN’s biggest tennis audience for a match from a Major event that did not include the legends of the last 20+ years – Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams.
The afternoon window on ESPN (noon – 7 p.m.) averaged the second-best ever for opening day, trailing only 2015, the launch of ESPN’s exclusivity and first-ball-to-last-ball coverage (680,000 viewers) with 626,000 viewers, up 44% from 2021. ESPN broke its first-day record with 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 fourth day of the tournament was ESPN’s most-watched Day of the US Open ever with 1 million viewers. ESPN2’s prime-time telecast including the Williams sisters’ doubles match was the third most-viewed Third-Round telecast ever on ESPN networks. The entire telecast averaged 1.5 million viewers, up 131% from the same night a year ago. The Williams Sisters’ match averaged 2.2 million.
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