Yankees–Red Sox deliver Sunday Night Baseball’s biggest audience in 15 years

Viewership is in for the first New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game on Sunday Night Baseball this season, and it is marking a 15-year high for the Sunday-night series.

From the bottom of the fourth inning, when the game was joined in progress by NBC, the game averaged 4.0 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. That is the most-watched regular season baseball game since Yankees-White Sox at MLB’s Field of Dreams game in 2021 (5.87 million) and the most-watched Sunday Night Baseball game since a Yankees-Red Sox extra-inning game in August 2011 on ESPN (4.72 million). Of course, this is Sunday Night Baseball‘s first season airing on a broadcast network in NBC after airing on ESPN since its inception in 1990.

Note that viewership comparisons to previous years are complicated by Nielsen’s shift to its Big Data + Panel methodology in September 2025, which has generally boosted sports viewership compared to prior years. The final viewership number also includes streaming viewership on Peacock measured by Adobe Analytics.

The first 3.5 innings of the game were exclusive to Peacock and NBCSN due to a rain delay in the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship. Viewership for the PGA Tour slightly edged out Sunday Night Baseball, with a 4.2 million average on NBC and Peacock. Viewership for the Travelers peaked at 5.6 million from 8:15 to 8:30, right before Sunday Night Baseball.

Yankees-Red Sox surpassed Diamondbacks-Dodgers on NBC and Peacock from Opening Day (3.16 million) to become the largest regular-season baseball audience of the season. NBC accounts for five of the 10 most-watched MLB games so far this season, and three of the top five.

Viewership for Yankees-Red Sox is also strong relative to the NBA. Only four Sunday Night Basketball windows on NBC averaged more viewers this season (Rockets-Thunder, Celtics-Lakers, Warriors-Lakers and Lakers-Knicks).