The battle between ESPN and Fox Sports 1 for 24-hour sports news supremacy started up last week and after the debut week on TV, so far the numbers are solid, but not stellar, as the network averaged 161,000 viewers during primetime of the debut week.
According to Variety.com, the network averaged over 160,000 viewers in primetime, which beat out Speed, which was what the channel was branded before changing over and they also had their best numbers for NASCAR racing on Wednesday and Saturday with over 420,000 viewers each time. The network will continue to build, but the numbers show a solid week for the network starting.
Fox Sports Live, the show going up against SportsCenter, had 75,000 for its three episodes against SportsCenter, while ESPN had over 1.5 million. The numbers will get better as time goes on and execs have already said that they are not worried about the viewer numbers at the beginning.
According to Variety, ESPN had 2.17 million primetime viewers and "trailed ESPN2 (473,000), NFL Network (383,000) and MLB Network (193.000) while outdrawing Golf Channel (137,000), NBC Sports Network (104,000), ESPNU (65,000) and NBA TV (58,000)."
