Sports Ratings Tracker

The Little League baseball regionals averaged 632,000 across ESPN and ESPN2, up 22% from last year. (Note that not all games are carried on Nielsen-rated platforms.) The top game was Darien, Conn., vs. Bayonne, N.J. on August 14 with a 0.6 rating and 1.17 million viewers on ESPN — the third-largest audience for the baseball regionals.

The lead-out game — Kapa’a, Hawaii, vs. Bonita, Ca. — followed with a 0.54 and 1.02 million.

(As with all superlatives, note that Nielsen did not begin tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and shifted last fall to a new methodology that integrates “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel.)

Last Sunday’s championship game of the Little League Softball World Series — Clayton (N.C.) over Owensboro (Ky.) — averaged a 0.7 rating and 1.29 million viewers on ABC, down from last year’s record of 1.44 million.

In the previous day’s semifinals, ESPN averaged a 0.42 and 767,000 for Owensboro-Toms River (N.J.) and a 0.39 and 697,000 for Clayton-Lake Mary (Fla.).

Coverage of the Little League Baseball tournament averaged 812,000 viewers across the ESPN family of networks, up 17% from last year, with the Little League World Series averaging 1.0 million (+2%).

Last Saturday’s United States Championship (Las Vegas-Fairfield, Conn.) was the most-watched game of the tournament with 2.8 million viewers, followed by the World Championship the following day at 2.4 million (Taiwan-Las Vegas). Both games were down from last year’s comparable audiences of 3.0 and 3.5 million respectively.

The International Championship (Taiwan-Aruba) drew 1.3 million.

Sunday’s championship game of the Little League Softball World Series averaged 1.44 million viewers on ABC, surpassing 2002 to rank as the highest average on record for the event. The game, which peaked with nearly three million viewers, more-than-doubled last year. Unlike last year, it had a live sports lead-in from a Lynx-Liberty WNBA Finals rematch (977K).

The full Little League Softball World Series averaged 347,000 viewers, up two-thirds from last year.

In other Little League action, the baseball regionals averaged 520,000 on the ESPN networks — up 80% from last year and a three-year high.