James Holzhauer’s Loss Had The Highest Overnight Rating Of His ‘Jeopardy!’ Run

Jeopardy! finally has a new champion. After 32 consecutive wins and more than more than $2.4 million in winnings, James Holzhauer finally met his demise on Monday night. The new champion is Emma Boettcher, who took down Holzhauer with a single-day total of $46,801. It was a shocking result … well, unless you were one of the people who knew it was coming.

Thanks to footage getting leaked, some funky air times in a handful of markets, and the Twitter account of Darren Rovell, Holzhauer’s loss was common knowledge for hours before the episode aired nationwide. It took away from the surprise, but as it turns out, it did not lead to people avoiding the show. In fact, for all we know, it might have helped.

Michael Mulvihill of Fox Sports tweeted that Monday’s episode of Jeopardy! had an overnight rating of 10.1, which made it the most-watched episode of Holzhauer’s run on the show.

The obvious guess here is that, well, people just wanted to watch Holzhauer finally lose. It’s like the famous episode of Monday Night Raw in which Mankind beat The Rock to win his first WWF Championship — the episode was pre-taped, the announcers for WCW Monday Nitro spoiled the ending, and people tuned into Raw to see how Mankind won the title, because they just wanted to watch it happen. The fine folks at Awful Announcing also posited that there were naturally high ratings because of older viewers not on social media tuning in, something Mulvihill thinks makes sense, too.

Whether people knew how it was going to end or not, fans who turned in were treated to a moment of history. Plus the episode itself was a blast to watch, as Boettcher’s style of play and finding of Daily Doubles led to Holzhauer playing like a normal contestant instead of the buzzsaw he was during his run.