This study examines how different types of co-viewing are associated with viewers' emotional response to the live broadcast of media events and their social identity. A survey (N = 206) was conducted to examine the effect of the live broadcast of a grand national ceremony in China. Results show that viewers experienced emotional arousal when they watched the media event in physical, mediated, and perceived co-viewing conditions. Among these conditions, mediated coviewing, operationalized as social media engagement during the event, is the strongest predictor of emotional arousal. Moreover, emotional arousal fully mediates the relationship between coviewing conditions and viewers' national identity conveyed in the broadcast ceremony. With empirical evidence, we demonstrate the continued relevance of the genre of media events and the importance of co-viewing experiences in the contemporary media ecology. We argue that this broadcast genre is still effective with regard to social integration, and dual-screening media events could be a new mechanism of this effect.