“Dancing With the Stars” closed out its 34th season with an impressive finale audience, as Robert Irwin and his partner Witney Carson took home the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy.
The final episode of the ABC ballroom dancing competition show’s milestone season, which aired from 5-8 p.m. PT, scored 9.24 million viewers across ABC and Disney+, according to preliminary live-plus-same-day Nielsen panel data.
That’s up 45% from last year’s finale, which scored 6.37 million viewers and, at the time, marked the biggest audience “Dancing with the Stars” had seen since its Season 29 finale in 2020. It also marks the show’s most-watched finale in nine years — since the Season 23 ender in November 2016. Among adults 18-49, the show nearly doubled last season’s finale with a 2.15 rating, an 89% increase, and the strongest finale result since Bindi Irwin, Robert’s sister, won with partner Derek Hough in Season 21. The finale stands as TV’s top entertainment telecast since ABC’s telecast of the Oscars in March among total viewers and in the 18-49 demo.
Additionally, fan voting hit 72 million votes for the finale, marking a new high after the semi-finals scored a series high of 55.9 million votes.
The finale concludes a banner season for the show, which picked up even more steam than last year’s buzzy season with new recruits like social media star Alix Earle, Irwin, Dylan Efron and two contestants from “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” in Whitney Leavitt and Jennifer Affleck, among others. A strong surge of younger viewers this season earned “Dancing with the Stars” a 2.55 rating among adults 18-34, the show’s strongest performance in that demo in 14 years.
Season 34 kicked off with the strongest premiere performance the show has seen in five years with 5.53 million viewers for its Sept. 16 debut, and grew steady throughout the season, reaching 6.63 million viewers for “Wicked” night and 6.74 million viewers for Halloween night.
Viewership slid down slightly amid the carriage dispute between Disney and YouTube TV, which made Disney-owned networks go dark on the platform from Oct. 30 through Nov. 14, with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Night reaching 6.34 million and the 20th birthday celebration reaching 6.67 million, but came back up for the semi-finals, which scored 7.22 million viewers.
On social media, the show gathered 6.9 million total social interactions, making it the No. 1 most social program on television across broadcast and cable and the No. 1 most social episode of any primetime series, year to date. The finale grew 109% over the show’s current season average of 3.3 million, and was up 67% over the show’s previous season final of 4.1 million.
Heading into Tuesday’s finale, the remaining celebrities competing for the Len Goodman Mirrorball trophy were Efron, Earle, Irwin, Jordan Chiles and Elaine Hendrix. The finale saw Irwin get crowned as the Season 34 champion.
The dancing doesn’t stop on ABC just yet. The network will host a “Dancing With the Holidays” special Tuesday, Dec. 2, with festive routines, holiday greetings and performances including from Pentatonix.
