The 2015 Miss USA pageant drew in 37,874 viewers at its peak during Sunday’s live stream on the beauty contest’s official YouTube channel.
During the first hour of the program, viewership rose from 15,608 to 22,963. The second hour saw viewership continue to rise, going from 24,487 up to 32,039, with a noticeable uptick during the swimsuit portion of the competition.
The live stream peaked near the end, however, just before Miss Oklahoma Olivia Jordan was crowned the 2015 winner of the pageant.
The YouTube stream was not ad-supported, and presumably not a serious revenue generator for the pageant. During Reelz’s commercial breaks, the stream cut to a graphic featuring a billowing American flag. Reelz will not release the television broadcast ratings until Tuesday.
Among this year’s most watched live-stream events was the Super Bowl on Feb. 1. NBC reported that, at its peak, an audience of 1.3 million viewers streamed the game via the network’s digital platforms.
Olivia Jordan, Miss Oklahoma, was crowned the 2015 Miss USA in an anodyne pageant production Sunday night that went off without a visible hitch despite being embroiled in controversy over pageant co-owner and presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign-trail remarks referring to undocumented Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” NBC and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision dropped the pageant in June in response to those comments. Reelz then picked up the pageant’s broadcast rights for “no more than $100,000,” as TheWrap reported exclusively.
Last year’s Miss USA pageant on NBC drew 5.5 million total viewers in Nielsen live-plus-same day ratings, up from 4.6 million the year prior.
Trump did not attend Sunday’s ceremony, however, claiming he was too busy campaigning. He tweeted on Saturday, “I will not be able to attend the Miss USA pageant tomorrow night because I am campaigning in Phoenix. Wishing all well!”