A walk-off thriller between the Cardinals and Dodgers continued baseball’s strong start to the postseason. Plus: numbers for Bubba Wallace’s first Cup Series win, the WNBA Playoffs and more.
Cards-Dodgers Wild Card thriller is top game on TBS since ’18
Wednesday’s Cardinals-Dodgers National League Wild Card game averaged 6.67 million viewers on TBS, trailing only Cubs-Pirates in 2015 (8.30M) as the network’s largest audience ever for the Wild Card round. Across all networks, it ranks seventh out of the 20 total standalone Wild Card games. Regardless of round, it was the most-watched MLB telecast on TBS since Game 4 of the 2018 Red Sox-Yankees ALDS, topping every game of the last two postseasons and the full 2018 ALCS.
The Dodgers’ walk-off win, which peaked with 7.4 million from 10-10:15 PM ET, jumped 41% from the previous standalone NL Wild Card Game in 2019 — which also aired on TBS (Brewers-Nationals: 4.73M).
As one would expect, it was no match for the previous night’s Yankees-Red Sox AL Wild Card Game on ESPN and ESPN2 (7.69M). Like Yankees-Red Sox, Cardinals-Dodgers was television’s top program in each of the key adult demographics, trouncing the top non-sports programs in adults 18-49 (1.7, ahead of a 0.9 for “Survivor”) and 18-34 (1.3, ahead of a 0.6 for “The Masked Singer”).
St. Louis topped all markets Wednesday with a 23.0 rating, its highest MLB rating since Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Keep in mind the Cardinals made the NLCS in 2019. Los Angeles turned in a 12.3, peaking at a 17.3.
No boost for Bubba breakthrough
Monday’s NASCAR Cup Series makeup race at Talladega, won by Bubba Wallace, averaged 1.16 million viewers on NBCSN — down 25% from the last time the fall race was run on a Monday two years ago (1.54M). Last year’s “spring” Talladega race, which ran on a Monday in June, aired on FOX and averaged 3.36 million. Keep in mind last year’s race attracted greater-than-usual national interest because of an incident involving Wallace.
The Xfinity Series race at Talladega, which was run as scheduled, averaged a 0.6 (+21%) and 983,000 (+20%) on Saturday afternoon.
Sky clincher is top WNBA playoff game before Finals since 2015
Wednesday’s Sun-Sky WNBA semifinal Game 4 averaged a 0.31 rating and 491,000 viewers on ESPN, the largest WNBA playoff audience outside of the WNBA Finals since the current playoff format began in 2016. The last pre-Finals game with a larger audience was Game 2 of a Liberty-Mystics first round series in 2015 (512K). The Aces-Mercury nightcap turned in a 0.24 and 383,000.
Going back to the weekend, Sun-Sky Game 3 drew a 0.20 and 340,000 on ESPN Sunday afternoon, followed by a 0.23 and 334,000 for Aces-Mercury Game 3 on ABC. Both games increased double-digits from the respective windows last season, Aces-Sun Game 4 (0.17, 251K) and Storm-Lynx Game 3 (0.19, 271K).
Plus: EPL, more MLB, preseason
Coverage of the English Premier League is averaging 608,000 viewers across the NBC networks this season, including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen — up 31% from last year and the best start to the season since 2015-16. … Last weekend’s season finale of MLB on FOX averaged a 0.9 and 1.65 million, up 31% in ratings and 47% in viewership from last year (0.7, 1.12M). TBS chipped in a mere 118,000 for Brewers-Dodgers on the final day of the season (-33%), its smallest audience of the season. … Last week’s Flyers-Bruins NHL preseason game, the first NHL game ever on TNT, averaged a 0.14 and 232,000 viewers. The Golden Knights-Kings nightcap chipped in 133,000. TNT’s NBA preseason debut Tuesday night (Bucks-Grizzlies) drew 424,000.
[Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 10.7, ShowBuzz Daily 10.4, 10.5 a, b, 10.6, 10.7, network PR]
