LSU’s run to the Men’s College World Series Final delivered a couple of viewership milestones along the way.
Despite airing on ESPN2 to accommodate the NBA Draft, Thursday’s LSU-Wake Forest Men’s College World Series semifinal averaged 2.09 million viewers — the largest audience for the event since Game 2 of the Oregon State-Arkansas final in 2018 (2.16M). The previous high was set just three days earlier on Monday, when the same matchup averaged 2.02 million on ESPN.
Outside of the final, this year’s three LSU-Wake Forest games (Wednesday’s matchup averaged 1.89 million) delivered the three-largest MCWS audiences ever on the ESPN family of networks.
The top two also rank as the most-watched baseball or softball games on cable this year, college or pro. The top game of the Women’s College World Series — Oklahoma’s title-clinching win in Game 2 of the Final — averaged 1.86 million. The top Major League Baseball game on ESPN so far this season, Red Sox-Yankees on Sunday Night Baseball two weeks ago, averaged 1.94 million.
Overall, LSU’s five games have been the most-watched of this year’s tournament. Their three games against Wake Forest hold the top three spots and their two games against Tennessee rank fourth and fifth at 1.80 million (Tuesday) and 1.61 million (last Saturday) respectively.
Not only have the LSU games been the most-watched of the tournament, they have also generated the largest year-over-year gains. Thursday’s game scored the biggest jump at 165 percent, though some of that is because last year’s comparable Mississippi-Arkansas game aired in an earlier timeslot (858K). The apples-to-apples comparisons are no less impressive, with gains of 87 percent last Saturday, 62 percent Monday and Tuesday, and 40 percent on Wednesday.
By comparison, the biggest jump for a non-LSU game was 29 percent for Tennessee-Stanford Monday afternoon (1.08M).
It should be noted that all five LSU games aired in primetime, compared to just two of the eight other games. Florida-Virginia averaged 1.17 million last Friday night (+4%) — the largest non-LSU audience of the tournament — and Florida-Oral Roberts scored 1.11 million on ESPN2 opposite Sunday Night Baseball last weekend (-16%).
Outside of TCU-Virginia, which averaged 1.15 million on Father’s Day (-3%), the afternoon games rank as the least-watched of the tournament. Oral Roberts-TCU delivered the smallest audience with 685,000 on the opening day of play last Friday (+10%), followed by TCU-Oral Roberts on Tuesday (926K, -1%), Florida-TCU on Wednesday (983K, +8%), Wake Forest-Stanford last Saturday (988K, +12%) and previously noted Tennessee-Stanford game on Monday.
Entering the LSU-Florida final, the Men’s College World Series is averaging 1.33 million viewers across the ESPN networks — up 28% from last year (1.04M).
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 6.21 a, 6.22, b; 6.23 a, b, network PR)
