Imagine if the Red Sox had shown up.
Wednesday’s Red Sox-Yankees American League Wild Card Series Game 2 averaged 7.41 million viewers on NBC, trailing only last year’s winner-take-all Game 3 between the same two teams (7.44M) as the most-watched Wild Card game since the round expanded to a best-of-three format in 2022.
The Yankees’ blowout win, which peaked with 9.2 million viewers in the 9:30 PM ET quarter-hour, increased 10% from last year’s Game 2 between the same teams on ESPN (6.76M).
The five Red Sox-Yankees Wild Card games over the past two years rank as the most-watched in the best-of-three era. Across the full history of the Wild Card round, including the original single elimination format that began in 2012, Red Sox-Yankees accounts for five of the nine largest audiences — four from the past two years, plus their 2021 matchup on ESPN (7.69M).
Most-watched MLB Wild Card games
The full series averaged 7.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched Wild Card Series yet. That is despite the Red Sox being dominated 18-2 across the two games.
(Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that Nielsen has recently tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.)
For the season, Red Sox-Yankees accounts for three of the top four MLB audiences — not counting the All-Star Game or Home Run Derby — with Games 1 and 2 holding the top two spots and a regular season “Sunday Night Baseball” matchup ranking fourth (3.96M).
Placing third on that list was Wednesday’s Phillies-Braves Game 2, which averaged 4.2 million viewers — up more than a third from Padres-Cubs on ABC last year (3.1M). The first two games of the series averaged 4.1 million, up 28% from Padres-Cubs in the same windows last year, with figures for Thursday’s winner-take-all Game 3 set to be released Monday.
This year’s Padres-Cubs series aired exclusively on Peacock and NBCSN, figures for which are generally not publicized. The same is true of White Sox-Astros.
Again excluding the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby, NBC owns the seven largest audiences of the MLB season between its four Wild Card Series games and three on “Sunday Night Baseball” — Yankees-Red Sox (3.96M), Dodgers-Yankees (3.94M) and Red Sox-Dodgers (3.80M). (Note that those Sunday night numbers combine a Nielsen-only linear audience with streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics.)
Even with the All-Star Game and Derby included, NBC owns seven of the top nine, with that figure certain to rise to eight of the top ten once Phillies-Braves Game 3 is included.
