Final Ratings: WBC Final Sets Records In Caribbean; F1 Debut On NBCSN Down Sharply

Tuesday's Dominican Republic-Puerto Rico World Baseball Classic championship marked the most-watched sporting event in the Dominican Republic in at least the past 10 years. Nearly 39% of available viewers tuned in for the game, breaking the previous record set for the DR-Netherlands semifinal. The game also averaged 843,000 viewers in the U.S. on MLB Network, making it the second-best audience on the network for a non-postseason game (fourth best audience overall). Additionally, it set a record in Puerto Rico with 64% of available viewers tuning in across Telemundo, MLB Net and ESPN Deportes, breaking the previous high set for the team’s semifinal against Japan last Saturday. MLB Net’s six most-viewed non-postseason games all came from the ’13 WBC.

WHAT’S UP DOC? ESPN drew 1.6 million viewers for the premiere of “Survive and Advance” last Sunday night. That ranks 11th among all ESPN documentaries since the “30 for 30” series began in October ’09. The film’s audience was down from 2.0 million viewers for the premiere of “The Announcement” on Selection Sunday last year, and down from 2.7 million viewers for the premiere of “The Fab Five” on the same day in ’11. Meanwhile, the premiere of truTV’s documentary “Bluegrass Kingdom: The Gospel of Kentucky Basketball,” drew 278,000 viewers last Sunday from 8:00-9:00pm ET. truTV led into the doc with an NCAA selection show special from 7:00-8:00pm, which drew 396,000 viewers.

HALF OFF: NBC Sports Network drew a combined 262,000 viewers for the live and replay telecasts of the F1 Australia Grand Prix last Sunday, which was the net’s first F1 race as part of its new multiyear deal. That audience is down 49% from 518,000 viewers on Speed last year. The live race drew 124,000 viewers from 1:30-4:00am on Sunday morning, while the replay from 1:00-3:30pm drew 138,000 viewers. Last year, the live race drew 314,000 viewers and 204,000 viewers watched the replay.

NOTES: Fox finished with a 4.6 rating and 7.5 million viewers for last Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, up 4% and 3%, respectively, from a 4.4 rating and 7.3 million viewers in '12. Through four races, the NSCS on Fox is averaging a 6.3 rating and 10.4 million viewers, up 2% in both metrics compared to the same period last season….HBO averaged 1.2 million viewers for its “World Championship Boxing” telecast last Saturday night, which featured Timothy Bradley-Ruslan Provodnikov. The audience was flat compared to the net’s telecast last week of Bernard Hopkins-Tavoris Cloud. Last Sunday morning, HBO averaged 274,000 viewers for a replay of the Bradley-Provodnikov fight.

The charts below list final Nielsen ratings from recent sports telecasts. Ratings for ABC's coverage of the SEC Tournament were unavailable at presstime.