The new era of Major League Baseball on NBC began on strong note.
Last Thursday’s Diamondbacks-Dodgers MLB Opening Day game on NBC averaged a combined audience of 3.2 million viewers across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, marking the largest audience for an Opening Day game since the COVID-shortened 2020 season (Yankees-Nationals: 4.1M) and the largest outside of that anomalous circumstance since Cubs-Cardinals in 2017 (3.6M).
(Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is mere months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes generally skew comparisons to past years.)
The Dodgers’ easy win increased 88% from last year’s equivalent Tigers-Dodgers game on ESPN, which averaged a Nielsen-only 1.7 million. It would exceed all of last year’s regular season MLB games, the most-watched of which was a FOX regional window following The Belmont Stakes that featured Yankees-Red Sox (3.0M). NBC’s position is that because Nielsen does not track its streaming viewership, its combined Nielsen + Adobe audience figures are comparable to the Nielsen-only figures of other networks.
Keep in mind coverage aired directly opposite the NCAA men’s basketball tournament Sweet 16. Figures for those telecasts were not immediately available.
Earlier in the day, Pirates-Mets averaged 2.3 million — up 21% from Brewers-Yankees on ESPN last year (1.9M) and the most-watched Opening Day matinee on record. Keep in mind that nationally televised afternoon games on Opening Day are not a regular occurrence, with this year’s contest being just the second in the past five years.
The two-game average of 2.7 million is the highest for MLB Opening Day on a single network since the aforementioned 2017 opener, and the highest on record for a network that carried multiple games.
Figures for Wednesday’s Yankees-Giants MLB Opening Night game on Netflix were delayed and are expected to be made available Tuesday.
While NBC simulcast one “MLB Sunday Leadoff” game per season when Peacock held those rights in 2022 and 2023, the network had not otherwise carried any Major League Baseball games since Game 6 of the 2000 ALCS — and it had not aired any regular season games since “The Baseball Network” in 1995. The new NBCUniversal MLB media rights deal marks the most extensive relationship between the league and network since the end of its “Game of the Week” era in 1989.
In addition to MLB Opening Day, NBC also carries NBA Opening Night and the NFL Kickoff Game. The network also posted double-digit gains for its NBA Opening Night doubleheader in October (5.6M), which increased 90% from the prior year on TNT and was the most-watched Opening Night since 2010 (excluding the shortened season in 2011). As with MLB, it marked NBC’s return to NBA coverage after a lengthy absence.
NBC was also on pace to air the most-watched NFL Kickoff Game on record in September, until an hour-long weather delay.
