What To Make Of Pat McAfee's Lukewarm ESPN Debut Viewership | Bobby Burack

The Pat McAfee Show debuted on ESPN to 228,000 viewers Thursday.

For comparison, SportsCenter in the same 12 to 2 p.m. time slot drew 331,000 viewers the same day last year. However, year-over-year measurements are not the best barometer of success in this case.

Unlike last year, there are around 15 million homes without ESPN due to an ongoing Disney/Charter dispute.

For that reason, almost all ESPN daily shows are down compared to a year ago.

Perhaps the best measurement of success is how McAfee held up against other ESPN programs in the same morning-afternoon block. Here are the results:

But even those comparisons require context.

Of the four, only McAfee's show simulcasts on ESPN+ and YouTube.

Pat McAfee. (Photo by Alex Bierens de Haan/Getty Images)

His numbers on ESPN+ are likely low; talk shows don't perform well on the service. But the same cannot be said about McAfee's YouTube channel, on which viewers have streamed him for over three years.

Thursday, despite also airing on ESPN television, was no different. As of publication, the Thursday edition of the show has amassed over 454,000 views on YouTube.

Now, YouTube views are not the same metric as television viewers.

Nielsen measures television ratings by average viewership per minute of a broadcast. Meaning, McAfee averaged 228,000 viewers per minute on ESPN Thursday. YouTube, like X, counts any user who views a clip for at least two seconds as a “view."

So, you can't simply add McAfee's YouTube views to his TV viewers -- for a total of 676,000 -- to determine how many TV viewers he would've drawn if he only aired on television, like other shows.

It doesn't work like that.

Still, it's fair to wonder if he could have drawn around 300,000 viewers if it weren't for a simulcast on YouTube.

Of course, McAfee's debut episode won't determine his value to ESPN. It will take months and a full football season to determine that.

Prediction: ESPN will make a lot of money from its partnership with Pat McAfee -- on the digital side. His television success is a question mark.

McAfee moves the needle on the internet. However, internet stars have not traditionally translated to television.

Bill Simmons was Pat McAfee before Pat McAfee, the biggest online draw in sports media. Did you know Simmons once hosted "The Grantland Basketball Show" on ESPN television?

Probably not. No one watched it.

McAfee's placement in the ESPN lineup is also peculiar. The handoff from First Take with Stephen A. Smith to Pat McAfee is not a natural transition.

There is little viewership crossover between the two programs.

First Take features a mostly black cast (with Smith mostly debating black former players) with a primarily black viewership demographic.

McAfee's show features a mostly white cast (with McAfee interviewing former white players) with a primarily white viewership demographic.

Stephen A. covers more NBA topics than the NFL. McAfee covers almost exclusively the NFL and college football.

ESPN hopes to bridge the gap between the shows by featuring McAfee on First Take, where he will debate Stephen A. and Shannon Sharpe for a segment each Tuesday.

We'll see if it pays off.

McAfee also faces stiff competition from FS1 on the television side.

He airs head-to-head with Colin Cowherd. Thursday, The Herd averaged 180,000 viewers, a 64% year-over-year increase.

Cowherd trailed McAfee by just 48,000. That's about as close as ESPN and FS1 have been in viewership since the inception of the latter.

Here are the top 10 rated sports shows from Thursday, the first day of the NFL season: