After all these years, baseball still has no substitute for Yankees-Red Sox ratings.
Yankees-Red Sox scored a 1.8 rating and 2.75 million viewers on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball over the weekend, up 80% in ratings and 71% in viewership from last year (Dodgers-Mets: 1.0, 1.6M). There was no game in 2016 as ESPN had NFL preseason commitments.
The Red Sox’ come-from-behind win was the most-watched regular season game on ESPN, not counting Opening Night, since Rangers-Angels after a U.S. World Cup match in 2014 (2.89M). It tied the highest rating since another Yankees-Red Sox matchup in 2013 (2.1).
Regardless of network, Sunday’s game was the fourth-most watched of the season. Six of the top seven have featured the Yankees, with half of those six coming against the Red Sox. The rivals played in the top game of the season, a regional window on FOX in June that had 3.23 million.
The teams’ Saturday meeting pulled a 0.45 rating and 702,000 viewers on FS1 Saturday — up 88% in ratings and 94% in viewership from last year (Dodgers-Mets: 0.24, 361K) and up 96% and 122% respectively from 2016 (Red Sox-Dodgers: 0.23, 316K).
Friday’s game had 468,000 viewers on MLB Network, the network’s fourth-largest audience of the season — behind three other Yankees-Red Sox games. Thursday’s series opener had 449,000, ranking sixth for the season.
In other Yankees-Sox action, Monday’s Yankees-White Sox game scored a 0.43 and 646,000 on ESPN — down 23% in ratings and 25% in viewership from Cubs-Giants in a later window last year (0.6, 860K).
As for the rest of MLB, Angels-Indians scored 453,000 viewers on FS1 Saturday and 294,000 on TBS Sunday (-36%).
[Numbers from Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 8.7, MLB Network, Programming Insider 8.7]
