Expect Record TV Ratings For 3-Day NFL Draft

At long last ESPN and NFL Network will offer up a production that should be worth your ongoing price of admission to the wide world of cable sports — the Thursday through Saturday NFL draft.

Anticipation for a real thing, of course, is with all due respect to the WNBA draft, which ran for a couple of hours last Friday on ESPN.

By comparison, the NFL draft is pencilled in to run for 15 hours. That’s 3 1/2 hours for the first round on Thursday night, another 4 1/2 hours on Friday night for rounds two and three and seven hours as Saturday afternoon bleeds into evening for rounds four through seven.

Live sports on television. What a concept.

Yes, yes ESPN debuted its much hyped Michael Jordan documentary on Sunday night but ratings for live events are what attracts viewers and drives the network’s ratings. Even Michael Jordan is no match for the NFL.

But so you know: ABC, ESPN’s sibling in the Walt Disney-owned world of networks, will also broadcast the entire draft on free TV. The ABC broadcast, however, will differ from the singular ESPN/NFL Network entry. Let’s just say it will be less geeky and more feature-oriented. In other words, the stopwatch crowd of rabid NFL fans is expected to go cable while more casual fans are expected to gravitate to ABC.

The three-round WNBA draft lasted for two hours, a relative blink of the eye when compared with the 15 hours ESPN and NFL Network have pencilled in for the NFL draft.

The WNBA draft averaged 387,000 viewers. That was up 123 percent over the 2019 affair, which was presented on ESPN2 and ESPNU, which are no match for ESPN’s potential audience and ratings draw.

If the virtual NFL draft numbers increase by 123 percent over 2019’s record numbers for the Nashville draft, it will attract 58.4 million cumulative viewers as compared with 2019’s record number 47.5 million over all. In 2019, the Nashville draft broke down to an average of 6.1 million viewers tuned in at any given time. The 2020 ratings, a studio and at home presentation, would jump to an average of 7.5

The WNBA increase was buoyed by the COVID-19 crisis, which translate to no competing live sports on television while people were stuck at home. The NFL draft, will be conducted under the same circumstances.

The ESPN/NFL Network coverage should have an ESPN vibe with NFL Network personalities and trinkets thrown in. ESPN’s Trey Wingo will host the extravaganza with ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. Louis Riddick, Booger McFarland, Suzy Kolber, Chris Mortensen and Adam Schefter along for the ride. They will have to make room for NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, Kurt Warner, Michael Irvin and Daniel Jeremiah, who will throw their thoughts and opinions in.

Over on ABC, college football types Rece Davis, Jesse Palmer and Maria Taylor will hold down the fort with lots of touchy-feely video footage.