The Chicago White Sox topped the Houston Astros 3-2 on Opening Day Thursday, and the primetime audience was ESPN’s best for an Opening Day since 2020.
1.638 million watched Chicago’s victory, better than ESPN’s audiences for Opening Day in both 2021 (a tripleheader averaged 836,000 and topped out at 944,000 for Blue Jays-Yankees) and 2022 (1.367 million for Reds-Braves on ESPN2).
In 2020, the season began in July due to the pandemic. An audience of four million tuned in for Yankees-Nationals.
ESPN also announced that this was the most-watched regular season Astros game since 2017. I don’t have the energy to dig through Houston’s national TV viewership during the 2017 season, but given that 2017 was the start of Houston’s incredible run of contention, it’s pretty wild that no regular season game was able to exceed 1.638 million over the 2018-2022 seasons.
In other positive Opening Day viewership news, the Mets’ 5-3 win over the Marlins averaged 483,000 viewers on SNY, an all-time high.
[Data via ShowBuzz Daily]
