College World Series ratings were on the upswing in 2018, with the final averaging its largest audience in four years.
The three-game Oregon State-Arkansas College World Series final averaged 1.96 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN2, up 4% from last year’s two-game series (Florida-LSU: 1.89M) and up 81% from the last three-game series two years ago (Coastal Carolina-Arizona: 1.09M).
The Beavers’ win was the most-watched CWS final in four years (Vanderbilt-UVA: 2.01M).
Thursday’s deciding Game 3 had a 1.1 rating and 1.9 million on ESPN2. Game 3 was originally set to take place Wednesday on ESPN, but the entire series was pushed back a day due to a Monday rainout.
Compared to the last Game 3, which was also postponed to Thursday but aired on ESPNU in the afternoon, viewership increased an unsurprising 276% from 503,000.
Wednesday’s Game 2 had a 1.4 and 2.16 million on ESPN, up 17% in ratings and 8% in viewership from last year (1.2, 2.0M) and up 40% and 37% respectively from 2016 (1.0, 1.6M). It was the most-watched College World Series game since Game 3 of the 2014 final (2.4M).
Game 2, which peaked with 3.1 million from 10:45-11 PM ET, delivered the second-largest baseball audience on ESPN this year. An April Yankees-Angels Sunday Night Baseball game holds the top spot (2.19M).
Finally, Game 1 had a 1.2 (+9%) and 1.81 million (+2%) on Tuesday.
Locally, the series delivered ratings of 7.5, 7.7 and 9.1 in the Portland market, the latter two ranking as the highest CWS ratings ever in the market.
The complete College World Series averaged 1.1 million viewers (+4%) with the full NCAA baseball tournament averaging 551,000 — the highest since 2012.
[Numbers from Programming Insider 6.27, 6.28, 6.29; ESPN PR 6.29]
