Scheduling Shuffle Leads To MLS Audience Gains Across ESPN, Fox Sports, Univision

Scheduling changes in Year 2 of MLS’ TV deal with Fox Sports, ESPN and Univision delivered audience increases for each partner during the ’16 regular season. ESPN and ESPN2 combined to average 279,000 viewers, marking the networks’ best average since ’12. That figure also is up 13% from last season, as the flagship ESPN channel carried nine more games than in ’15. Fox and FS1 combined to average 236,000 viewers in ’16, fueled by a record five games on the Fox broadcast channel. That figure is up 20% from 197,000 viewers last season. Fox also delivered 1.3 million viewers on Sept. 18 for the first-ever MLS regionalized coverage on broadcast TV. That telecast, which aired around Fox’ NFL singleheader, marked the best MLS audience since ’04. There were no MLS games on Fox broadcast during the first year of the new deal. Meanwhile, a switch for Spanish-language games from UniMas to Univision led to an 11% increase for MLS games (245,000 viewers vs. 221,000 viewers). Helping that increase was 1.0 million viewers for Earthquakes-Galaxy on June 25, which marked the best Univision-MLS audience on record (this was MLS’ first season on Univision since ’99).