ESPN drew a 5.2 overnight for the Yankees' 8-4 win over the Twins in the AL Wild Card last night, giving the net a primetime win among all cable nets on a night when cable news nets saw big increases around coverage of the Las Vegas shooting tragedy. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined for a 5.0 in primetime last night, up from a 3.3 two years ago when ESPN last had the AL Wild Card. Last year's AL Wild Card on TBS, which saw the Blue Jays defeat the Orioles in a 10-inning walkoff win, drew a 3.3 overnight. However, that game went head-to-head with a Vice Presidential debate and lacked any figures from the Toronto market (not measured by Nielsen). ESPN last year carried the Giants' 3-0 win over the Mets, drawing a Wild Card-record 5.8 overnight. Two years ago, ESPN drew a 5.7 overnight for the Astros-Yankees Wild Card. Last night's game drew a 13.9 local rating in N.Y., marking the second-best figure on record for an ESPN baseball game in the market. The Astros-Yankees game two years ago drew only a 12.0 rating in the market. Meanwhile, Minneapolis-St. Paul last night drew a 17.5 local rating for the game, marking ESPN's best MLB figure ever in the Twin Cities market. Since the new Wild Card format began in '12, ESPN has carried four of the five top-rated games (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
HERE TO STAY: In N.Y., Tyler Kepner writes the implementation of the winner-take-all Wild Card format in '12 was one of MLB's "most inspired decisions." MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said, "We wanted to make sure everybody played hard all the way through the division. We wanted to disadvantage the wild card, so we decided: make them do a play-in game." Kepner writes this "runs counter to the natural rhythms of a sport played in slices of mostly three-game series over a punishing six-month grind." However, the "retort" is for teams to "win the division, and you'll have a playoff series." While MLB has its share of issues, including pace of play, there is "no momentum to change the wild-card format." Manfred said, "From a marketing-the-game perspective, knockout games draw a lot of attention. I think we're probably in the right place on that" (N.Y. TIMES, 10/4).
