"Friday Night Fights" on ESPN2 Tracking 3.3% Viewership Gain In '09

By Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor

"Friday Night Fights" (FNF) on ESPN2 is averaging 563,000 viewers through 18 telecasts to date in '09, up 3.3% from 545,000 viewers through the same period last year (20 telecasts). This year's most-viewed telecast to date was the April 10 event, which earned 779,000 viewers and was headlined by the David Lopez-Ossie Duran Junior Middleweight bout. The telecast was preceded by Knicks-Magic, which was the only regular-season NBA game on ESPN2 during the entire '08-09 season. Additionally, among viewers in the Hispanic demographic, which ranks boxing as the second-most-popular sport, "FNF" is averaging 61,140 viewers to date, which is tracking up from the 41,467 Hispanic viewers the series averaged for all of '08. Historically, the most-viewed "FNF" season was '06 with just over 600,000 average viewers, while '02-07 averaged between 450,000-550,000 viewers per season. The '08 season finished near 435,000 average viewers. Below is viewership for each "FNF" telecast to date in '09.

DATE	TIME	VIEWERS (000)
1/9	9:00-11:07pm	568
1/16	9:00-11:17pm	554
1/30	8:30-11:21pm	625
2/6	9:00-11:22pm	599
2/13	9:00-11:03pm	619
2/20	9:10-11:13pm	623
2/27	9:00-11:15pm	613
3/6	8:38-10:36pm	570
3/20	9:59pm-12:06am	503
3/27	9:53pm-12:00am	626
4/3	9:00-11:00pm	485
4/10	10:35pm-12:45am	779
4/24	10:50pm-12:51am	522
5/8	10:00pm-12:12am	571
5/15	9:00-11:06pm	542
5/22	8:50-11:00pm	370
6/5	8:30-10:30pm	459
6/12	10:00pm-12:00am	461

NOTE: Numbers for last week's telecast from Frisco, Texas, are excluded, as the event was shown tape-delayed from 1:30-4:00am ET after the Texas-Arizona State College World Series game went into extra innings, which was followed by a special "SportsCenter" from the U.S. Open.