Rays-A’s least-watched Wild Card game on ESPN

A ho-hum matchup of low-profile teams delivered one of the lower MLB Wild Card ratings.

Wednesday’s Rays-A’s American League Wild Card game averaged a 2.8 rating and 4.54 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN2, marking the least-watched Wild Card game on the ESPN family of networks (six telecasts), and the fourth-least watched overall (16 telecasts).

The only Wild Card games with a smaller audience were Rockies-Diamondbacks two years ago (2.6, 4.40M), Orioles-Blue Jays in 2016 (2.6, 4.20M), and Cardinals-Braves in 2012 — the only afternoon Wild Card game (2.6, 3.99M).

Ratings and viewership declined 26% from A’s-Yankees on TBS last year (3.8, 6.16M) and 33% from Twins-Yankees on ESPN in 2017 (4.2, 6.83M).

Compared to last year’s Wild Card game on ESPN and ESPN2, Rockies-Cubs, ratings fell a third and viewership 35% (4.2, 6.99M).

ESPN’s traditional broadcast averaged a 2.5 and 3.97 million, while ESPN2’s Statcast coverage had a 0.38 and 571,000. Statcast accounted for 13% of the total audience, compared to 9% for Rockies-Cubs last year (661K of 6.993M).

Both of this year’s Wild Card games declined by more than a quarter in ratings and viewership, with Tuesday’s Brewers-Nationals NL game down 31% and 32% respectively.

This year marked the first time that neither Wild Card game cracked a 3.0 rating or five million viewers.

All-time MLB Wild Card ratings, viewership

[Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 10.3]