2014 MLB Postseason Ratings Wrap-Up

Here are the viewership numbers for every game of the MLB postseason sorted by viewership. Game 7 of the World Series had more than ten million more viewers than the next-most viewed baseball game of the year.

The move of half of the pre-World Series portion of the postseason to Fox Sports 1, with one wild card game moving to ESPN, had a tremendous impact on the ratings. Only two non-World Series games, both ALCS games on TBS, had more viewers than ESPN’s Wild Card game, and only one other game beat TBS’ Wild Card game, and that only if Fox Sports 1’s analytics-based telecast of NLCS Game 1 is included in the numbers. FS1 was able to draw a larger audience to its most-watched broadcast ever, NLCS Game 4, than Fox alone drew to NLCS Game 1 (both had over five million viewers), and thanks to drawing the big-name Giants and Cardinals in contrast to the ALCS’ Orioles-Royals series, four out of five NLCS games drew a larger audience than all of TBS’ ALDS or non-primetime ALCS games, but none of FS1’s NLDS games could beat more than one primetime ALDS game, Royals-Angels Game 2, which had 3.414 million viewers.

The most-watched non-primetime game was Game 2 of the ALCS with 4.25 million viewers; the most-watched non-primetime Division Series game was Tigers-Orioles Game 1 with almost four million viewers, which started at 5:30 PM ET, followed by Orioles-Tigers Game 3 with 3.297 million viewers. Depending on definition, FS1’s most-watched non-primetime game was either Dodgers-Cardinals Game 4 at 5 PM ET with 3.267 million viewers, or Cardinals-Giants Game 3 with 2.779 million viewers, by far the smallest audience of the League Championship Series. Giants-Nationals Game 1, at just over two million viewers, was FS1’s only other non-primetime game, the least viewed non-MLBN game of the postseason, and the only FS1 game to be beaten by TBS’ least-viewed postseason game, Tigers-Orioles Game 2, a noon start that attracted 2.261 million viewers. The least-viewed non-MLBN primetime game was Dodgers-Cardinals Game 3 with 2.887 million viewers.

26 games had more viewers than the most-watched regular season game window of the season, with Dodgers-Cardinals Game 3 beating every regular season game window that wasn’t World Cup-inflated. For perspective, 30 games aired on Fox, TBS, ESPN, and FS1, all but two of which beat every non-World-Cup-inflated regular season game on ESPN.

Of MLB Network’s two games, Nationals-Giants Game 3 attracted a larger audience with 1.838 million viewers, with Cardinals-Dodgers Game 2 lagging behind with 1.785 million viewers. Both games beat last year’s MLBN games by substantial margins (last year’s most-watched MLBN game had less than a million viewers), and both games broke the previous record for the most-watched game in MLBN history, Tigers-Athletics Game 2 in 2012, which had had around 1.3 million viewers. Both games aired later in the day than previous MLBN postseason games, and Cardinals-Dodgers Game 2 competed with an extra-inning game on FS1 for much of the game, so it finished lower despite airing more of the game in primetime. Only 19 regular season windows on any network beat Nationals-Giants Game 3, including no non-“Sunday Night Baseball” ESPN windows, and that only if the YES Network audience for Derek Jeter’s final home game is combined with the MLBN audience. Only one additional regular season window beat Cardinals-Dodgers Game 2.

Only four regular season games on MLBN, probably all involving the Yankees, beat MLBN’s overflow coverage of Cardinals-Dodgers Game 1. FS2’s overflow coverage of the same game became, at the time, the ninth most-watched program in the network’s history, including its days as Fuel, and the fourth most-watched program since relaunching as FS2. To my knowledge, only one regular-season game not on Fox, ESPN, or ESPN2 beat the combined audience for the overflow coverage on both networks.

All numbers from TVbytheNumbers, TV Media Insights, and Awful Announcing. Some Fox household ratings from SportsBusiness Daily.