DALLAS, TX - It was already pretty cool that Championship Sunday coverage of the Carvana Mesa Arizona Cup made it on FOX.

It’s even cooler now that ratings and viewership data are available.

According to Sports Media Watch, the PPA’s two-hour broadcast of the mixed doubles and women's singles gold medal matches brought in 501,000 viewers. That made it Sunday’s 18th most-watched sporting event and gave an overall rating of 0.29, good for 17^th on the day.

With those viewership numbers, pickleball outpaced installments of NCAA men’s basketball (378,000) and MLB spring training on ESPN (392,000), PGA Tour action on Golf Channel (469,000), and NHL action on TNT (265,000). 

This tells us that people—a lot of people, actually—will watch pro pickleball if it’s available on mainstream channels like FOX and ESPN.

Let’s hope the sport continues to carve out premium airtime in the future.