The ratings game

Last Tuesday’s Wings-Liberty WNBA regular season game averaged 954,000 viewers on ESPN, marking the third-largest audience of the season on cable or streaming — with the top three coming within four days. Read more

Athletes Unlimited Softball games were averaging 204,000 viewers on the ESPN networks through last weekend (10 telecasts), up 213% from last year, when the majority of games aired on ESPNU and none were carried on the flagship ESPN network. Read more

The third week of BIG3 basketball averaged a 0.3 rating and 578,000 viewers on CBS last Sunday, up 8% in viewership from week three last year (0.3, 537K). All three weeks of the BIG3 season have increased year-over-year.

Last weekend’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest averaged 5.0 million viewers across ABC and ESPN2, more-than-tripling last year (1.6M) and easily the largest audience on record for the event. The previous high was 2.8 million for a taped airing in 2014 that immediately followed a FIFA World Cup match.

Coverage of Wimbledon was averaging 759,000 viewers on the ESPN networks through the quarterfinals, up 24% from last year and the networks’ highest average at this point of the tournament. Read more

FOX averaged a 1.4 rating and 3.335 million viewers for regional Major League Baseball coverage last weekend, marking the network’s largest audience of the season and the second-largest across all networks. The high water mark is 4.2 million for a partially preempted Yankees-Red Sox “Sunday Night Baseball” game on NBC last month, a figure that combines a Nielsen-measured linear audience with streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics. Read more

Last weekend’s second week of the BIG3 averaged a 0.4 rating and 677,000 viewers on CBS, up a third in ratings and 23% in viewership from week two last year. Both weeks of the three-on-three basketball league have increased from a year ago despite World Cup competition (with the standard caveat regarding changes in Nielsen methodology).