The 78th Annual Tony Awards delivered its largest broadcast audience in six years on Sunday night.
The 2025 ceremony, hosted by Cynthia Erivo, boasted 4.85M viewers on CBS, per live + same-day Nielsen data.
That’s up 38% over last year’s audience of 3.53M.
At just over three hours long, the telecast also drew the largest streaming audience ever for Paramount+, parent company Paramount Global touted Monday afternoon.
This is a strong performance for the Tony Awards, especially after a tough few years for the ceremony celebrating American theater.
On Sunday night, the 78th Annual Tony Awards attracted the biggest broadcast audience in six years.
According to Nielsen data from both live and same-day broadcasts, the 2025 ceremony, which was hosted by Cynthia Erivo, attracted 485 million viewers on CBS. Compared to 3.53M last year, that represents a 38 percent increase in audience.
On Monday afternoon, parent company Paramount Global boasted that the telecast, which lasted just over three hours, attracted the biggest streaming audience ever for Paramount+. Although precise figures were not provided, it appears that the streamer’s viewership increased by 208% year over year.
Particularly after a difficult few years for the Tony Awards, which honor American theater, this is a strong showing. In addition to airing on Father’s Day, last year’s telecast had one of the lowest Sunday primetime viewing windows ever recorded, according to Nielsen, which may have contributed to the relatively low turnout but probably didn’t make it any less painful.
Follow along on Deadline.
This followed the Tony Awards’ apparent comeback in 2023, when just over 4 million people watched for the second year in a row. As with most major award shows, the pandemic had a significant impact on the Tonys, and its hybrid 2021 telecast saw a sharp decline in viewership, falling to just 2 point 6 million.
Even so, the Tony Awards have yet to attract the same number of viewers as before the pandemic. They were already on a bit of a downward trend after not reaching the 6.3M viewers who tuned in for the 2018 show, as evidenced by the telecast’s 5.4M viewers in 2019.
