Their matchups against the Mets and Dodgers may be more relevant to the playoff picture, but even up to now, nothing moves the needle in baseball like the Yankees against the rival Red Sox.
Regional Major League Baseball action featuring Red Sox-Yankees averaged 3.0 million viewers on FOX Saturday night, marking the largest regular season MLB audience on any network since the same matchup on FOX in September 2022, in the middle of the Aaron Judge home run chase (3.1M).
Coverage had a direct lead-in from The Belmont Stakes, which averaged 3.83 million — up 5% from last year. Compared to coverage featuring Dodgers-Yankees in the same post-Belmont window last year, the telecast was also up 5% from 2.91 million.
Viewership surpassed the previous season-high of 2.73 million for Yankees-Dodgers on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball the previous week. The season-high before that was 2.54 million for the Mets-Yankees Subway Series in the same Sunday Night Baseball window.
Red Sox-Yankees did not fare as well on Sunday night, averaging 1.92 million on ESPN, actually down from Dodgers-Yankees in the same window last year (2.30M). That is despite last year’s game facing considerably stronger NBA Finals competition.
Nonetheless, the Sunday night package is averaging 1.75 million viewers in what may be its final season on ESPN — up 12% from last year and the highest average at this point of the season since 2017.
The Yankees have now played in four of the five most-watched MLB windows this season, which as may go without saying is more than any other team.
