An often-fraught pairing before, during and after their days in New York, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter brought a few extra eyeballs to ESPN’s KayRod simulcast Sunday night.
Red Sox-Yankees averaged a combined 1.2 rating and 2.17 million viewers on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball over the weekend, including a 0.19 and 336,000 for the Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez-fronted “KayRod” coverage on ESPN2 — easily the largest audience for the alternate broadcast this season.
The previous “Kayrod” high was 264,000 for the season-opening edition in April.
Derek Jeter was the guest on the “KayRod” broadcast this week, reuniting with his former Yankee teammate and rival Rodriguez. Viewership peaked at 494,000 during the 8:15 PM ET quarter-hour.
As for the overall audience, Sunday’s game delivered the seventh-largest audience of the MLB season. Yankees-Red Sox games account for six of the top ten, five of the top seven and three of the top four largest MLB audiences this season. Saturday’s matchup, the featured game of a FOX regional window, made the list at number ten with a 1.2 and 2.08 million.
Overall, the Yankees have been featured in nine of the ten most-watched windows this season, the lone exception being the “Field of Dreams” game last Thursday — which despite declining sharply from last season remains the most-watched telecast of the season.
Largest MLB audiences this season
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 8.16, with additional information from ESPN PR)
