ESPN’s Opening Night broadcast on Sunday did extremely well for the network, drawing a 2.0 rating and 3.35 million viewers. Those marks are up 47% and 43% from 2014. But what about ESPN’s quadrupleheader on Monday? Well, those four games also performed quite well, drawing an average of 803,000 viewers, and were up 21% in viewership from 2014.
As a whole, the five game ESPN slate (excluding Wednesday night’s Red Sox-Phillies broadcast) averaged 1.37 million viewers and a 0.9 rating, up 48% and 50% from 2014.
Oddly enough, the most-watched game of Monday wasn’t Blue Jays-Yankees, Mets-Nationals, or Giants-Diamondbacks…it was Indians-Astros. The 7 PM game was the lone contest to take place across baseball in the timeslot, and drew 1.1 million viewers for ESPN, which is strong considering that the end of the game went up against the NCAA Championship Game between Duke and Wisconsin (which did extremely well in its own right).
Speaking of those other three contests, Toronto-New York averaged 870,000 viewers (up 27% from Cubs-Pirates in 2014), New York-Washington drew 775,000 (down 6% from Cardinals-Reds last season), and San Francisco-Arizona brought in 555,000 viewers (down 17% from Mariners-Angels a year ago) against the National Championship Game.
But remember, folks – baseball is dying, just like it has been for the last 130 or so years.
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About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.