Keith Thurman vs. Danny Garcia Peaks at More than 5 Million Viewers on CBS

Last Saturday’s mega fight between Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia wasn’t just a battle to unify half of the world welterweight championships; it was a blockbuster for the sport of boxing. The Showtime Championship Boxing event, which was televised live on Showtime parent company CBS this past Saturday, peaked at 5.1 million viewers.

The bout, which saw Thurman retain his WBA 147-pound title and snatch Garcia’s WBC version via split decision, was the largest audience for a primetime boxing broadcast since 1998. The bout’s viewership was also up from last year’s classic brawl between Thurman and Shawn Porter.

According to figures released by Premier Boxing Champions, which presented the event, the peak audience of 5.1 million viewers took place during the 12th round of the contest. Those numbers were the second-highest peak total since ’98, second only to last August’s duel between Errol Spence Jr. and Leonard Bundu, which immediately followed the men’s basketball gold medal game in the Rio Olympics.

The average viewership of the action in Saturday’s main event was 3.74 million viewers, with the average viewership of the entire event coming in at 3.1 million. According to stats from Nielsen Social Guide, Thurman-Garcia was the No. 1 most talked about broadcast television event on Saturday and the hashtag #ThurmanGarcia was used over 22,000 times on Saturday night and trended No.1 on Twitter during the broadcast. The event also set a Barclays Center attendance record for a boxing match as 16,533 crammed into the Brooklyn-based arena.