Yankees-Red Sox sets new Wild Card Game viewership record on ESPN

Fenway

HF Bookie and Bruins Historian
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Sep 26, 2007
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Impressive numbers

Be curious to see how the LDS ratings play out.

Dodgers/Giants will bring many eyeballs. Milwaukee/Atlanta should do well in the upper Midwest and South.

Boston/Tampa Bay will be strong in New England and should deliver eyeballs in the Tampa/Orlando/Fort Myers markets in Florida.

Chicago/Houston is the unknown. The Astros have always had lukewarm ratings and the White Sox have a loyal hardcore fanbase but will Cubs fans watch? :dunno:


Yankees-Red Sox sets new Wild Card Game viewership record

The Boston Red Sox’s 6-2 win over the New York Yankees in the AL Wild Card Game Tuesday night set some ratings records for ESPN. As per Mitch Metcalf at ShowBuzz Daily, the main ESPN TV broadcast (with Matt Vasgersian, Alex Rodriguez, and Buster Olney) drew an average audience of 7.11 million, with the ESPN2 broadcast (a Statcast-driven alternate presentation with Jason Benetti, Eduardo Perez and Mike Petriello) averaged 573,000. That puts the total average TV audience (these numbers do not count streaming) as 7.69 million.

That’s an AL Wild Card Game record, even against past games with streaming numbers included. (It gets even better if you also add in the 144,000 average viewers who watched the Spanish-language broadcast on ESPN Deportes; that would make the total ESPN TV audience 7.83 million, which is a Wild Card Game record from either league.) As per ESPN’s release, that’s the most-watched MLB game on their platforms since 1998:

The 2021 Major League Baseball American League Wild Card Game presented by Hankook Tire – the Boston Red Sox defeated the New York Yankees 6-2 – is the most-watched MLB game on ESPN platforms since 1998. The game telecasts across ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 7.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen. The game peaked with 8.4 million viewers from 10:15-10:30 p.m. ET.

…The American League Wild Card Game presented by Hankook Tire propelled ESPN to win the night across all of television, including broadcast and cable. Additionally, it was the most-streamed MLB event ever on ESPN platforms with 73.6 million minutes consumed digitally.
 
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sh724

Registered User
Jun 2, 2009
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Missouri
Not true.

The Cubs/Pirates 2015 National League Wild Card on TBS drew 8.30 million viewers.

Also, the Yankees/Astros in 2015 drew 7.73 million and the Giants/Mets in 2016 drew 7.71 million.

Certainly impressive numbers for the Red Sox/Yankees, but nothing historic.

SOURCE: Yankees-Red Sox Wild Card game hits multiple highs

How is it not true?

Cubs/Pirates is a NL game on TBS. The OP specifically mentions AL and ESPN not MLB or other networks

The 7.3MM Yankees/Astros number includes streaming which is not included in the Yankees/Red Sox numbers. When looking only at people watching on TV this years game had more viewers. ESPN no longer reports streaming numbers.
 

NextBigThing

Registered User
Feb 25, 2010
802
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Devine Rink
How is it not true?

Cubs/Pirates is a NL game on TBS. The OP specifically mentions AL and ESPN not MLB or other networks

The 7.3MM Yankees/Astros number includes streaming which is not included in the Yankees/Red Sox numbers. When looking only at people watching on TV this years game had more viewers. ESPN no longer reports streaming numbers.
Huh? The title of the thread is literally "Yankees-Red Sox sets new Wild Card Game viewership record."
That is not true.
 

Section 104

Registered User
Sep 12, 2021
651
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Huh? The title of the thread is literally "Yankees-Red Sox sets new Wild Card Game viewership record."
That is not true.
Although the headline on the link site (awful announcing) does have “AL wild card” in the headline.

Which goes to show why networks will show certain teams a lot more than others.
 

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