ESPN’s baseball viewership has been on the upswing of late.
Braves-Cardinals scored a 0.8 rating and 1.32 million viewers on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball last weekend, up a third in ratings and 30% in viewership from Giants-Cubs last year, which aired on ESPN2 opposite an NBA conference final Game 7 (0.6, 1.02M), and flat and up 30% respectively from 2017 (Mets-Pirates: 0.8, 1.22M).
Atlanta’s win was the fourth-straight Sunday Night Baseball game to increase over last season, and the second straight to hit a multi-year high. The series opened the season with five straight declines.
The increases were not limited to Sunday night. ESPN scored 977,000 viewers for Cubs-Astros on Wednesday night (+8%); 759,000 for Indians-Red Sox on Monday afternoon (+18%); and a 0.47 (+34%) and 725,000 (+37%) for Mets-Dodgers on Monday night.
Bucking the trend, Marlins-Nationals had 521,000 in the first game of Monday’s Memorial Day tripleheader (-46%).
Of the last 14 ESPN MLB windows that can be compared to last year, twelve have increased. By comparison, 14 of the previous 19 had declined.
Shifting to Fox Sports, regional action on FOX had a 1.4 and 2.24 million last Saturday night — down 13% in ratings and 9% in viewership from the same weekend last year (mostly Angels-Yankees: 1.6, 2.47M) and flat and down 1% respectively from 2017 (mostly Cubs-Dodgers: 1.4, 2.26M).
Despite the dip, it delivered the second-highest rating and viewership of the MLB season. As is no real surprise, the two windows on the FOX broadcast network rank as the two most-watched.
Earlier in the day, FS1 drew 252,000 for Diamondbacks-Giants (-53%).
[Numbers from Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 5.28, 5.30; Programming Insider 5.30]
