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US Open 2020 Viewership Fell By 45% Due To Big Stars' Absence

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 9/24/2020 2:56:27 PM

In a report by Forbes, the US Open 2020 ratings were down 45% compared to 2019, as per the tournament's official broadcasters ESPN. The women's singles final between Naomi Osaka and Victoria Azarenka saw a 43% fall while the men's singles final between Dominic Thiem and Sascha Zverev had 48% lesser viewers as compared to last year's summit clash between Rafael Nadal and Daniil Medvedev.
The majority of this fall has been attributed to the fact that some of tennis's biggest names were missing from the draw. Defending champion Bianca Andreescu, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer all chose to sit out the tournament for various reasons, while pre-tournament favourites Djokovic and Serena Williams, did not make it to the finals.
The event also clashed with a number of other major sports events in the US such as the NBA and NHL playoffs and the start of the NFL season, which was a rare occurrence in American sports history.
The 2019 US Open women’s final with Serena Williams averaged 3.72 million viewers on ESPN. It was the most-watched match ever at the US Open since the Serena Williams-Venus Williams quarter-final in 2015, which saw 6.00 million viewers, and the most-watched final since the Serena Williams-Caroline Wozniacki clash in 2014, which averaged 4.50 million viewers according to ESPN/Nielsen.
The men’s final this year had the lowest viewership numbers in the ESPN era. The 2015 US Open final with Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer was the highest watched Men's singles final with over 3 million viewers. Last year's final with Rafael Nadal had almost 2.8 million views, double as compared to this year.