Richard Pagliaro | Friday, July 3, 2026
Picture credit score: Shaun Brooks/CameraSport
Wimbledon—Serena Williams misplaced her Wimbledon singles comeback, however ESPN emerged as a giant winner.
The 23-time Grand Slam champion’s three-set loss to Aussie Maya Joint on Tuesday, June thirtieth, delivered file viewership for host broadcaster ESPN.
It was ESPN’s most widely-viewed Wimbledon Day 2 on file.
The community stories a median of 1.8 million viewers, together with a peak viewers of two.1 million between 4-4:15 p.m. Jap time, tuned it to see the 44-year-old iconic champion battle the Aussie 24 years youthful. To place that viewing quantity in perspective, some non-Grand Slam matches on Tennis Channel, as an example, draw fewer than 100,000 viewers.
For the whole Tuesday broadcast, ESPN averaged 937,000 viewers, a rise of 55 % over 2025, making it ESPN’s most-viewed Wimbledon first-round telecast on file.
Serena Williams’ comeback additionally contributed to ESPN’s most-viewed Wimbledon first spherical on file (mixed Monday and Tuesday viewership), with a median of 734,000 viewers.
The four-time Olympic gold-medal champion has lengthy been a large rankings winner for ESPN. Throughout her peak taking part in years, Serena Williams as soon as accounted for six of the Prime 10 most highly-viewed ESPN Grand Slam telecasts in historical past.
