ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball hit its lowest point in several years. In other news, the AL Central race gave FS1 a decent bump last weekend, and horse racing’s Travers Stakes rebounded from a steep decline last year.
Mets-Nats Hits Sunday Night Low
- Mets-Nationals had a 0.6 rating and 914,000 viewers on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball last weekend, down 40% in ratings and 37% in viewership from Royals-Red Sox last year (1.0, 1.5M) and the network’s least-watched Sunday night game in at least five years. The previous low was 947,000 for a game involving the same teams last September. (That excludes a Royals-Orioles game in 2015 that was bumped to ESPN2 and had 442,000.) The following night’s Indians-Yankees game was significantly stronger relative to last year, up 41% to 750,000 viewers. In other action, last Wednesday’s Rangers-Angels matchup had 411,000 (-49%).
AL Central Race Gives FS1 Modest Boost
- Fox Sports 1 scored a 0.32 rating and 517,000 viewers for Royals-Indians last Saturday afternoon, up 7% in ratings and 10% in viewership from Angels-Tigers last year (0.30, 471K) but down 30% and 19% respectively from Yankees-Braves in 2015 (0.46, 638K). Earlier in the day, Mets-Nationals had just 191,000 (-69%) — the network’s second-smallest audience of the season. Twins-Padres had 171,000 earlier this month. Over on TBS, Sunday’s Mariners-Yankees game had a 0.21 (-45%) and 323,000 (-41%).
Travers Stakes Bounces Back on NBC
- Coverage of the Travers Stakes, part of the Breeders Cup Challenge, had a 0.7 rating and 1.2 million viewers on NBC Saturday afternoon — flat in ratings but up 20% in viewership from last year (0.7, 968K) but down 50% and 42% respectively from 2015, when American Pharaoh participated in the race (1.4, 2.0M). The race featured each of this year’s Triple Crown winners, Always Dreaming, Cloud Computing and Tapwrit.
[Numbers via ShowBuzz Daily 8.29]
