NFL Draft's first night tops the Oscars by 2 million viewers

TheWrap

About 12.5 million viewers watched the opening night of the NFL Draft across ABC, ESPN and NFL Network Thursday. night, about 2 million more viewers than the 10.4 million who watched the Academy Awards on ABC earlier this week. The NFL Draft Night 1 ratings fell from its record high of 15.6 million last year in the midst of the early weeks of the pandemic. ESPN led all networks with 6.48 million, followed by 4.19 million  ABC and 1.85 million for NFL Network. As ProFootballTalk points out, the NFL Draft's first night didn't just top the Oscars, it had "more viewers than any game of last year’s NBA Finals, and more viewers than five of the six games of last year’s World Series. The NFL dominates everything else on television."