Sky Sports delighted with stunning TV audience figures on Premier League restart

Sky Sports have reported buoyant viewing figures for the two Premier League matches after restart.

Wednesday saw Aston Villa draw 0-0 draw with Sheffield United with a peak Sky Sports TV audience of 2.7million, this was a 43% increase on the season average in live matches for the broadcaster.

The later game on Wednesday then saw Manchester City win 3-0 against Arsenal, that had a peak audience of 3.4million, a 94% increase on the 2019/20 season average for Sky Sports live TV games.

The broadcaster also said that SkySports.com attracted 4.9million unique users and, in less than 24 hours, there were more than 12million views of Premier League videos.

All the remaining 90 top flight games will be shown on live TV, with them shared between BT Sport, Sky Sports, BBC and Amazon Prime

Most interesting will be what kind of TV audiences the 33 free to air games will get on Sky’s Pick channel, BBC and Amazon Prime.

Newcastle play Sheffield United on Sunday and Sky Sports are broadcasting it. However, with it being on their Pick channel, it will be free to air, so could potentially be a far bigger audience than any normal Sky Sports live TV game.

Meanwhile, BBC1 have ended up with the scraps for their live TV games and have Bournemouth v Crystal Palace. However, going out prime time 7.45pm on BBC1 on a Saturday night, it will ironically almost certainly get the biggest TV audience of any match this weekend.

An interesting study published in February 2020, showed the average UK audiences for Newcastle United Live TV matches this season on Sky Sports and BT Sport, comparing and contrasting to the other 19 Premier League clubs.

The figures used data from BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) and they were for the 2019/20 season up until February 9 but did not include games shown on Amazon Prime.

As you can see, the dismal and boring football played under Steve Bruce, proving a turn off for both Newcastle fans and neutrals, even bottom club Norwich averaging a higher live TV audience.

Most watched team by average (not peak audience during a broadcast, which is always a higher figure) viewers:

Liverpool – 1,662,801

Manchester United – 1,520,948

Tottenham Hotspur – 1,286,847

Chelsea – 1,143,175

Manchester City – 1,136,054

Arsenal – 1,117,644

Wolverhampton Wanderers – 1,108,265

Everton – 1,064,044

Norwich City – 987,411

Newcastle United – 955,915

Sheffield United – 944,188

Leicester City – 869,820

Aston Villa – 865,251

Watford – 814,270

Southampton – 760,833

Brighton & Hove Albion – 739,313

Burnley – 703,005

Crystal Palace – 658,897

West Ham United – 636,296

Bournemouth – 625,427