Major League Baseball is pleased with the television viewership of its first series’ new format.
ESPN’s exclusive coverage of of the Wild Card games featured nine games from October 7-9 and averaged 2.8 million viewers. That’s up 64% from the previous MLB Wild Card Series round in 2020 which included 18 games.
Despite going up against NBC’s Sunday Night Football, ESPN was still able to attract 4 million viewers fir Game 3 of the New York Mets vs. San Diego Padres.
“We’re exceedingly happy with the performance of this event. Our nine games reached more than 35 million fans and viewership overall was up 64 percent from the 2020 rendition of this first round series,” said Rick Mace, ESPN’s senior manager, programming and acquisitions. “We consider this a fantastic start to our exclusive, annual Wild Card Series package and a strong indicator that these will only increase in future years with the possibility of more game 3s.”
Four of the nine games averaged over 3 million viewers with Game 3 of Mets-Padres being the most-watched game. The least-watched was Game 1 of Tampa-Cleveland which drew 1.8 million viewers.
“Fans have responded very positively to the new Postseason format,” MLB’s chief revenue officer Noah Garden said. “There is an interesting mix of clubs competing in games that have been tense and exciting. And we’re seeing outstanding performances from an incredible group of players. We’re happy to see the fans responding to the great competition on the field.”
