The YES Network had a massive first weekend of New York Yankees baseball viewership, as the network presented the second and third games of the season following ESPN broadcasting their Opening Day contest against the Milwaukee Brewers. According to Nielsen data released Friday by the network, the YES Network’s first two games of the season averaged viewership that ranked as the most-viewed cable programming in the month of March within the New York DMA.
In fact, Yankees fans flocked to the YES Network, consuming more than 152 million minutes of Yankees game action over the network’s first two telecasts of the 2025 regular season. This includes viewing across both the YES linear network and on YES within The Gotham Sports App, which also impressively peaked at #4 nationally among Apple’s sports apps.
Meanwhile, all of this occurred while the network was in deep talks with Comcast/Xfinity before a March 31 deadline for reaching a carriage agreement.
Furthermore, according to a release on Friday, the YES Network’s two-game linear TV delivery of 386,000 average total viewers outperformed the average for NCAA Men’s Basketball game telecasts on CBS, TNT, TBS, and truTV between March 20–30 in the New York DMA. Notably, Sunday’s YES telecast led the way with an average viewership of 432,000 total viewers, peaking at 496,000 total viewers from 3:45 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
As a result, the Sunday series finale was the most-viewed program on cable that day in the New York DMA, as well as the network’s most-viewed non-primetime game in a calendar year.
Similarly, Saturday’s game was also the most-viewed program on cable for the day in the New York DMA. It was the YES Network’s most-viewed Saturday afternoon game in nearly two years, with an average viewership of 309,000 viewers.
All in all, approximately 1.1 million unduplicated total viewers in the New York DMA watched the YES Network during Opening Day weekend for the New York Yankees.
Additionally, it was a successful two-day run for The Gotham Sports App. Average streaming time per user was up 15% from 2024, and the platform averaged 9% more unique visitors across the weekend than the average from the last two Yankees Opening Day weekends.
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox
