This Magic Moment gets big viewers for ESPN

The premiere of ESPN’s 30 For 30 documentary This Magic Moment was a success for ESPN.

This Magic Moment scored 1.5 million viewers on ESPN Thursday night according to SportsTVRatings.com. According to SportsMediaWatch.com, This Magic Moment was up 56 percent from the debut of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary Sole Man last year (970K), but down 18 percent from The Bad Boys in 2014 (1.8 million). It was the most-watched sports telecast of the night easily crushing the Stanley Cup Playoffs on the NBC family of networks.

The encore airing of This Magic Moment on Friday night on ESPN garnered 640,000 viewers which was the second most-watched sports program behind only Pardon The Interruption which had 816,000 viewers according to SportsTVRatings.com.

Impressively the encore also defeated live Stanley Cup Playoffs. A later airing on ESPN2 at 11pm On Friday night garnered 428,000 viewers.

These numbers do not include online airings of the documentary too. In addition to the live airing on ESPN, it was streamed via the Watch ESPN app and then was also made available in its entirety on ESPN3.com and Watch ESPN shortly after its initial air.

This Magic Moment chronicled the rise and fall of the Orlando Magic in the early 1990s and their run to the NBA Finals in 1995 behind the stellar power of Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway. It was truly one of the more transformative and influential teams of their era.

And a little bit of nostalgia does not hurt anyone either. It was very much the perfect 30 for 30 story about a team that did not win a championship but still had a resonant impact on the NBA and its culture.

For Magic fans it was an exhilarating and painful walk down memory lane as ultimately the story ends with the what if of that team as O’Neal departed and Hardaway’s body broke down with injury.

At least everyone got on their couches to watch it as it happened.