Nearly six million viewers tuned into Major League Baseball’s “Field of Dreams” game in the sport’s largest regular season audience since 2005.
Thursday’s Yankees-White Sox “Field of Dreams” game from Dyersville, Iowa — the site where the 1989 film “Field of Dreams” was filmed — averaged a 3.2 rating and 5.87 million viewers on FOX (5.90M including Fox Deportes), marking the largest regular season baseball audience on any network since 2005.
Chicago’s walk-off win, which peaked with 6.09 million from 8:45-9 PM ET, more-than-doubled this year’s previous season-high of 2.68 million for a regional window featuring Red Sox-Yankees on FOX in June.
By comparison, the opening game of last year’s months-delayed season — which was baseball’s most-watched regular season game in nine years at the time — averaged 4.01 million.
Chicago was the top market for Thursday’s game with a whopping 11.2 rating and 25 share, meaning that 25% of televisions in use in the nation’s #3 market were tuned to the game in the average minute. New York City ranked second at a 6.6/14, followed by St. Louis (6.0/13), Kansas City and Hartford (both 5.6/12).
The “Field of Dreams” game averaged more viewers than all-but-one of last year’s MLB Postseason games prior to the World Series, trailing only a Braves-Dodgers NLCS Game 7 that aired on both FOX and FS1 and had an NFL lead-in (9.66M). While unusually strong for a regular season game, it was no match for last month’s All-Star festivities; the Home Run Derby averaged 7.13 million on ESPN and ESPN2 and the All-Star Game itself 8.24 million on FOX.
Compared to other sports, “Field of Dreams” outdrew all-but-one NBA regular season game last season, trailing Mavericks-Lakers on Christmas (7.01M), and all-but-two playoff games prior to the NBA Finals (Bucks-Nets Game 7: 6.91M; Hawks-Sixers Game 7: 6.16M).
In another example of the NFL’s power, it was not as big a draw as the previous week’s preseason-opening Hall of Fame Game, which also aired on FOX and faced the Summer Olympics (7.31M).
The game averaged a 1.5 rating in adults 18-49.
[Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 8.13, Fox Sports]
