‘The Bachelor’ Season 28 Premiere Doubles Its Audience In 7-Day Viewing

Joey Graziadei’s journey to find love is off to a strong start on ABC.

The Season 28 premiere of The Bachelor has collected 6.02M viewers after seven days of viewing across linear and streaming, up nearly 3M from the live+same day audience, according to Nielsen data.

In terms of adults 18-49, the episode is up 219% with a 1.69 rating — compared to the 0.53 it scored L+SD.

In linear viewing alone, seven-day data shows the premiere of The Bachelor is up 2% compared to the Season 27 premiere with 3.96M viewers. That is an increase of nearly 1M versus L+SD, not including any streaming data.

Compared to last season’s average, the premiere episode is up 5% in linear viewing after seven days. It’s fairly common for the premiere episode to have a stronger audience than the entire season average, since most shows experience some sort of audience decline as the season progresses.

So, this number essentially indicates that the season is likely to essentially hold steady with last season overall. Episode 2, which aired this past Monday, managed about the same L+SD audience as the premiere with 3.1M tuning in. Delayed viewing for that episode is not yet available.

ABC is going to call this a win, since the franchise has been struggling with audience declines for years. It is likely that the ratings success of The Golden Bachelor has reinvigorated interest in the flagship series as well.

The Bachelor is back in its Monday night time slot on ABC with new episodes at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

The Bachelor is produced by Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Warner Horizon.