'The Last Dance' finale falls just short of NASCAR viewership

Once ESPN moved up the showings of "The Last Dance" docuseries about Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls team that won the franchise's sixth NBA championship of the decade because of the coronavirus pandemic, it was guaranteed that the work would set viewership records for documentary content aired by the Worldwide Leader.

MJ and the Bulls defeated all opposition in the spring of '98, but they couldn't topple NASCAR on Sunday.

On Monday, ESPN's Isabelle Lopez reported that episodes 9 and 10 of "The Last Dance" averaged 5.6 million viewers. Episode 9 was the third to hit over 5.8 million viewers, and the show was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter each Sunday night that episodes debuted.

All 10 episodes account for the most-watched documentary content ever aired by any ESPN station.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, "The Last Dance" wasn't the most-viewed original sports content of the day. NASCAR's The Real Heroes 400 event at Darlington Raceway that occurred Sunday afternoon drew over six million viewers on over-the-air Fox.

Earlier this month, ESPN announced that new documentaries will continue to air on the network each Sunday through at least June 14. Disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong, Bruce Lee, and the 1998 MLB home-run record chase are the subjects of those films.