It may be easy to overlook given the historic juggernaut in Los Angeles, but the New York Yankees have not ceded their position as the biggest TV draw in baseball.
Last weekend’s Yankees-Phillies “Sunday Night Baseball” game on NBC averaged 3.15 million viewers across a Nielsen-measured linear audience (1.7 rating, 2.91M viewers) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics — up 90% from Mets-Giants on ESPN and ESPN2 last year (1.66M) and the fifth-largest audience of the MLB season.
NBC has aired five of the six most-watched games, including all three of the Yankees’ appearances on the network. (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.)
Overall, the Yankees have played in four of the top seven games on any network this season — their three NBC appearances, plus their Opening Night game against the Giants on Netflix — more than any other team. No other team has played in more than two, including the Dodgers (one against the Yankees and the other in primetime on Opening Day).
Sunday marked the final Yankees game on NBC during the regular season, wrapping a stretch of three appearances in five weeks. Based on the current standings, New York would be back on NBC again in October during the Wild Card round, which airs exclusively on NBCUniversal platforms under the company’s new three-year rights deal.
FOX, which had two Yankees games rained out this season — against arguably their two highest-profile opponents in the Red Sox and Dodgers — gets the team twice more this season, including this coming weekend against the Cubs.
This past weekend, FOX averaged a 1.2 and 2.36 million for its usual regional window (Dodgers-Mets or Mariners-Rangers), up from coverage featuring Dodgers-Red Sox last year. Coverage faced competition from the WNBA All-Star Game on ABC (1.6, 3.16M).
Going back to last week, ESPN drew its largest audience of the season for Dodgers-Phillies July 20, which drew a 0.9 and 1.75 million. That was followed by Cardinals-Angels at a 0.4 and 814,000. Two nights later, the network drew a 0.7 and 1.34 million for Tigers-Cubs.
