By The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry and Men’s College World Series posted viewer gains over the holiday weekend.
Saturday’s Major League Baseball coverage on FOX, which featured Yankees-Red Sox in most markets, averaged a 1.3 rating and 2.40 million viewers — marking the third-largest audience of the MLB season. Coverage on FOX the previous week (mostly Dodgers-Yankees) holds the top spot with 2.91 million, followed by an opening weekend FOX window in March that drew 2.53 million.
Ratings and viewership soared over the same weekend last year, when FOX was slated to carry the same matchup but it was rained out. The network aired Rays-Padres nationally instead (0.6, 1.08M).
Another Yankees-Red Sox game averaged a 1.1 and 2.07 million on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, the network’s second-largest audience of the season. Boston’s win, which peaked with 2.53 million in the 9:15 quarter-hour, trails only Dodgers-Yankees the prior week (2.30M). ESPN’s MLB coverage this season is averaging 1.58 million viewers, up 5% from last year.
The Sunday night game faced direct competition from North Carolina-Tennessee in the Men’s College World Series, which averaged a 0.8 and 1.68 million on ESPN2 — the seventh-largest MCWS audience on record outside of the MCWS Final. The first six games of the MCWS averaged 1.2 million viewers, up 5% from last year and the highest average at this point of the event on record.
Four of the six games thus far have averaged at least 1.1 million viewers. Among them, FSU-Tennessee drew a 0.7 and 1.37 million Friday night, NC State-Kentucky had a 0.7 and 1.36 million Saturday afternoon and Sunday’s Virginia-FSU matinee at a 0.6 and 1.14 million, all on the ESPN flagship.
