After opening with a pair of declines, viewership picked up for the final two games of the Blue Jays-Yankees ALDS.
Tuesday’s Blue Jays-Yankees American League Division Series Game 3 averaged a 2.5 rating and 4.96 million viewers on FS1, marking the largest audience of the Division Series through Wednesday’s games. Across all Fox Sports platforms, the game averaged 5.19 million per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.
The Yankees’ comeback win, their only victory of the series, surpassed all of last year’s LDS games on cable.
Keep in mind that Nielsen has this year expanded its out-of-home viewing sample and shifted to a new methodology that adds “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes to its existing panel. As it is Nielsen policy to compare this year’s “Big Data + Panel” figures to last year’s panel-only data, this year’s games will have a built-in advantage.
Wednesday’s Game 4 averaged a 2.4 rating and 4.63 million, per Programming Insider, with the across-all-platforms figure rising to 4.89 million. Both windows increased over last year’s comparable Dodgers-Padres games on FS1. That is a reversal of the first two games — both Blue Jays blowouts — which declined from last year’s equivalent Phillies-Mets windows.
Because Canadian audiences do not count toward U.S. Nielsen estimates, Canadian teams tend to be a drag on U.S. viewership. That seemed to be the case in Games 1 and 2. It may be that the on-field drama helped overcome that in Games 3 and 4.
Canadian figures for Games 3 and 4 were not immediately available.
In the other AL series, Mariners-Tigers Game 4 averaged 2.56 million in a matinee window Wednesday (Nielsen + Adobe Analytics). Due to a rain delay, Game 3 was pushed into direct competition with Blue Jays-Yankees. Coverage began on FS1, averaging 2.5 million, but shifted to FS2 and MLB Network after Blue Jays-Yankees started, where it averaged 1.62 million (Nielsen + Adobe Analytics).
Shifting to the National League, Wednesday’s Dodgers-Phillies Game 3 averaged 3.7 million on TBS and truTV, preceded by Brewers-Cubs at 3.2 million — up from last year’s comparable 2.1 million for Guardians-Tigers and 3.4 million for Yankees-Royals.
