Despite being sandwiched between Final Four Saturday and the National Championship Game, and despite airing on ESPN2, Major League Baseball’s Opening Night telecast was a rousing success.
The game drew 3.5 million viewers (more than all but three NBA telecasts on ABC so far this season) and a 2.7 cable rating. The rating tied the previous record for an ESPN2 regular season game, held by the New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox opener in 2005, and the number of viewers set a new record.
The rating was also up 127% from last year’s rained-out Cleveland/White Sox game.
Those numbers bode very well for Major League Baseball, as the league starts the first year of its new television deal. FOX could have similar success this Saturday with regional coverage (the earliest FOX baseball coverage since 2004, when the network aired a special April Yankees/Red Sox game in primetime).
