French Open Ratings Up 25% in TNT’s First Year, Fueled by Finals

TNT Sports aired its last NBA game for the foreseeable future two weeks ago. It got a little consolation from the French Open in its first year holding the tennis Grand Slam’s broadcasting rights.

The men’s final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner—a 5-hour, 29-minute match that was the longest final at Roland-Garros—drew 1.8 million viewers Sunday on TNT and truTV, up 8% from last year on NBC, when Alcaraz also came back to defeat Alexander Zverev in five sets. It was the most-watched men’s French Open final since 2021 (Novak Djokovic vs. Stefanos Tsitsipas, 1.9 million). 

The match peaked at 2.6 million viewers at around 2:30 p.m. ET, during the deciding fifth set that ended in a tiebreaker. 

The women’s final on Saturday that saw American star Coco Gauff come back from a set down to defeat world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka drew 1.5 million viewers, up 94% from the 756,000 who watched Iga Świątek’s easy win over Jasmine Paolini last year. Saturday was the most-watched women’s French Open final since 2016, the last time Serena Williams made it to the final at Roland-Garros.

It was a strong start for TNT as it began its 10-year, $650 million deal with the French Open, taking over from NBC and the Tennis Channel. The French Open saw a 25% viewership increase this year. It’s difficult to accurately assess the lift as the majority of the previous year’s games aired on Tennis Channel, which has only a fraction of the distribution of TNT. The finals aired on NBC, however, which is in many more households than TNT.

Warner Bros. Discovery, TNT Sports’s parent company, announced Monday that it will be splitting into two separate entities. It remains unclear exactly how sports properties will be managed between the two.