How Many People Watched Donald Trump's 2025 Inauguration? (Spoiler: Less Than Biden Four Years Ago)

Chris Katje

January 22, 2025

Millions of people tuned into media coverage of Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday, Jan. 20, which came with the stock market also being closed and some people having the day off in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Here's a look at how many people watched the inauguration and how it compares to the last two presidential inaugurations.

What Happened: While investors are enthusiastic about the potential stock market returns under Trump's new term in the White House, some may have skipped watching the inauguration.

The 2024 presidential election was watched by an average of 24.59 million viewers according to Nielsen data, as reported by Deadline.

Among the viewership totals, 17.4 million were aged 55 and older, 4.67 million were aged 35-54 and 1.43 million were aged 18-34.

Former President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021 was watched by an average of 33.76 million viewers. Trump's first inauguration in 2017 was watched by an average of 30.64 million viewers.

The 2024 inauguration saw significantly lower viewership compared to the past two events.

The 12 p.m. ET to 12:45 p.m. ET swearing-in ceremony and inaugural address of Trump on Monday saw 27.12 million viewers, which was also down from around 40 million for 2021 and 38.3 million for the same portion of the past two inaugurations.

Many media outlets including broadcast and cable outlets aired the inauguration. Here is the viewership from the top five network leaders:

Fox News, a unit of Fox Corporation (NASDAQ:FOX)(NASDAQ:FOXA): 10.67 million
ABC News, a unit of Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS): 4.58 million
CBS News, a unit of Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA)(NASDAQ:PARAA): 4.35 million
CNN, a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD): 1.80 million
MSNBC, a unit of Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA): 880,000

Fox News was the overall winner and had the highest viewership in the 25-54 demographic at 2.09 million, nearly double second-place NBC News (1.22 million).

Deadline noted that the viewership by network could be the result of partisanship. Fox News, which is Republican-leaning, had the lowest viewership of major networks for Biden's inauguration in 2021.

Trump's second inauguration also followed a trend of presidents having lower viewership the second time they are sworn into office. President Barack Obama had 37.8 million viewers for his inauguration in 2009 and saw only 20.6 million viewers for his second ceremony in 2013.

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Why It's Important: The lower viewership figure for Trump's inauguration comes as the 2024 election season helped boost viewership for many cable news outlets and boosted advertising rates around items such as the presidential debates and election night coverage.

The 2024 election had two debates featuring Trump with the June debate against Biden having 51.3 million viewers and the September debate against former Vice President Kamala Harris having 67.1 million viewers.

These figures were down from 73.1 million viewers for a debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 and a record-breaking 84 million viewers who watched a 2016 debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Fox winning the viewership race could continue its momentum from the political season. The media company also has its eyes set on the upcoming Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9 for which it was seeking at least $7 million per 30-second ad.

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Photo: Gguy via Shutterstock

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