Back in its normal format for the first time in three years, viewership nonetheless dipped for baseball’s Little League World Series.
Coverage of the Little League World Series baseball tournament averaged 917,000 viewers across the ESPN family of networks (38 telecasts), down 14% from last year, when the tournament consisted only of U.S.-based teams (1.07M). Viewership also declined 6% from 2019, the previous year the tournament was held as normal (978K). This year’s average is the lowest for the event since 2017 (900K).
Sunday’s Honolulu-Curacao Little League World Series World Championship, which ended after four innings due to the mercy rule, averaged a 1.4 rating and 2.50 million viewers — marking the lowest rated and least-watched title game in at least two decades. Ratings fell 26% and viewership 17% from the previous traditional championship game in 2019 (River Ridge, La.-Curacao: 1.9, 3.02M).
The previous day’s Honolulu-Nolensville, Tenn., United States Championship averaged a 1.4 and 2.42 million — the smallest audience for the U.S. title game since 2009.
Despite the lower numbers, the games rank as the third and fifth-most watched baseball or softball games this year (not counting the MLB All-Star Game or Home Run Derby). As is usually the case on championship weekend, the Little League games were the most-watched baseball games of the weekend — with the U.S. championship topping MLB on FOX Saturday (1.2, 1.95M) and the World Championship topping ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball the following day (Braves-Cardinals: 1.1, 1.89M).
In other action, the Curacao-Taiwan International Championship drew a 0.95 and 1.54 million on ABC Saturday, down 21% in ratings and 14% in viewership from the previous edition of the game in ’19 (1.2, 1.79M).
By contrast to the double-digit decline for the baseball tournament, softball’s Little League World Series posted a 19 percent increase in viewership. The baseball tournament, which includes a number of broadcast television games, still averaged a considerably larger audience than its softball counterpart (294K).
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN, ShowBuzz Daily 8.30)
