CrossFit Games

How Many People Watched the 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games Finale?

August 23, 2022 by
Photo Credit: TJ Danenza (https://www.instagram.com/tjdanenza/?hl=en)
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CBS Broadcasting Inc. reported that 608,000 people tuned in to watch coverage of Sunday’s final workouts of the 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games in August, a number a CBS representative told the Morning Chalk Up was “solid.”

  • “The broadcast produced by the CrossFit team was so well done,” the spokesperson added. 

How this compares: When you compare this number to any given PGA tournament—such as the recent CBS broadcast of the PGA Golf Wyndham Championship—this number doesn’t look quite as impressive, as 1.8 million people tuned in to watch a golf tournament that isn’t even one of the four majors of the year. 

  • Similarly, when compared to any given MLB regular season game, the 608,000 CrossFit Games viewers looks even more bleak. For example, ESPN’s coverage of a recent game between San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers had nearly three times the viewership (1.68 million) as the biggest show of the year in the sport of CrossFit.
  • That being said, when compared to a less mainstream sport—such as a recent CBS broadcast of Pro Bull Riding, which had 711,000 viewers—the CrossFit Games is comparable. Similarly, the CrossFit Games had in and around the same viewership as ABC’s coverage of the WNBA final series, where 599,000 people tuned into the first game and 762,000 into the second.

Worth Noting: 608,000 viewers this year was considerably more than the 2020 CrossFit Games, which had 380,000 people tune in to the CBS broadcast.

The big picture: While the sport of CrossFit still has a long way to go in terms of generating a mainstream fan base, 608,000 people is still 608,000 people, and exposure on a major network like CBS has to be seen as positive for the continued growth of the sport and its potential to attract thousands, hopefully hundreds of thousands, of new people into the community. 

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