ESPN averaged 961,000 viewers for its four games on MLB Opening Day, up 51% from 636,000 viewers for the corresponding games last season, which included two on a Thursday afternoon and two on a Friday night. The Red Sox-Yankees game in the 1:00pm ET window led all telecasts with 1.1 million viewers, up from 595,000 viewers for Red Sox-Tigers in the same window on a Thursday last year. In the early primetime window, Phillies-Braves drew 1.0 million viewers, up from 682,000 viewers last year for Giants-D’Backs on a Friday night.
LOCAL: Several RSNs set local ratings records on Opening Day. The Phillies-Braves game on SportSouth earned an 8.9 local rating in Atlanta, marking the net’s best opening game rating ever for the Braves and best rating for any Braves game since ’00. Root Sports Northwest had its best Mariners Opening Day rating since ’07. MASN earned a 4.8 local rating in DC for the Marlins-Nationals opener, marking a new Opening Day record for the Nationals. Comcast SportsNet Chicago earned a record-breaking 3.4 local rating for the White Sox opener. The previous record was a 3.2 in ’09. An extra-innings game led to a combined 23.5 local rating in Cincinnati for the Angels-Reds game. Also seeing year-over-year gains for their respective openers were the Cardinals (FS Midwest), Giants (CSN Bay Area), A’s (CSN California), Pirates (Root Sports Pittsburgh), Twins (FS North), Dodgers (FS Prime Ticket) and Red Sox (NESN).
