SBJ Media: RSN audience down during MLB season

The collective RSN audience for MLB teams during the regular season was lower in 2024, hindered by a Comcast-Diamond Sports Group carriage dispute and the Paris Olympics -- both of which occurred during MLB’s strongest months of July and August. In some markets, the Comcast carriage dispute led to a 50% drop in audience numbers during the impasse.

Only seven teams saw gains this season, which is an unusually low number in positive territory. Even in down years, the scales are more evenly balanced between winners and losers for a particular season. Markets like Atlanta, Detroit, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Minneapolis-St. Paul were hit hard by the Comcast carriage dispute. In all, seven teams saw a single-digit percentage decline, while 15 teams saw double-digit declines. 

The RSN result also went in an opposite direction of a bigger national package like ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” (which had its best season since 2019) and the early rounds of the MLB Postseason (which is up 18% through the LDS round).

All five of the top-gaining teams in RSN audience this season made the playoffs. The Royals led all MLB teams in gains (+32% on Bally Sports K.C.), fueled by a run to a Wild Card berth and the popularity of young star Bobby Witt Jr . The NL-East-winning Phillies were No. 2 with a 25% gain on NBC Sports Philadelphia, followed by the Dodgers (+11% on SportsNet L.A.), Guardians (+11% on Bally Sports Great Lakes) and Orioles (+9% on MASN). 

The two outliers were the Pirates on SportsNet Pittsburgh (+5%) and A’s on NBC Sports Bay Area (+4%). “What surprised me -- or maybe even shouldn't -- about the Pirates was that yeah, they had a decent start, but they were probably out of it by that last third of the season,” said Playfly CEO Craig Sloan. “So to see them finish in the territory that they did, those [Paul] Skenes numbers must have been through the roof to balance things out with how they were performing when he wasn't pitching.” Sloan also called Pittsburgh the “most underrated market” in MLB, citing the “durability” factor among Pirates viewers. 

Baseball > entertainment TV during the summer

Ratings for MLB games in prime time ranked first locally on cable in 80% of U.S. markets that host MLB teams. Ratings for MLB games in prime time also ranked No. 1 locally on all networks in 56% of U.S. markets that host MLB clubs.

“Baseball doesn't get enough credit for the fact that it does hold up the TV ecosystem during the summer,” said Sloan. “It's still one of the few things we know you have six games a week on, and it can still come in that size of an audience to be the No. 1-rated program in many of the markets for that many nights. It's a total volume and total minutes play.” 

Caught looking

The team with the sharpest drop was the Marlins, down 76% on Bally Sports Florida. The Marlins are among the MLB teams that could see an expedited release from Diamond Sports, but they also must work out the current situation that has the team with an equity stake in the RSN. The Marlins were also hit particularly hard during the Comcast-DSG dispute, as 65% of Bally Sports Florida viewership for games was in Comcast homes. 

After the Marlins, it was the Rays in terms of year-over-year decline at -50% on Bally Sports Sun. Then it was the Rockies, who fell under the auspices of MLB for their local delivery this season after AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain was disbanded (all three teams under MLB delivery this season were down year-over-year). 

One team to watch for in 2025 is the Tigers. The team was down overall this season, but after cratering in May, local ratings on Bally Sports Detroit shot back up as the team made an unexpected run to the postseason. Without the Comcast carriage dispute, there is even a chance the Tigers could have seen a gain in 2024 (52% of Bally Sports Detroit homes were Comcast). The Tigers audience size fell off around 53% during the dispute and then was up 61% after it was resolved. 

Hockey legend Angela Ruggiero’s Sports Innovation Lab (SIL) continues to walk the walk after hosting the first women’s sports NewFront earlier this year, throwing a “club” party in New York timed with Advertising Week.

Execs and media buyers from companies such as Publicis, Mindshare, Group Black and Amazon gathered in Midtown Manhattan to discuss the growing impact of women’s sports. SIL just announced a partnership with FanServ, a platform that connects media buyers with sports publishers.

“We have a programmatic marketplace of inventory, and we are pushing our audiences into FanServ,” said SIL CMO Gina Waldhorn. “That’s a huge deal, because they specialize in media inventory that will now be powered by our programmatic audiences. Everything we’re trying to do with this data cloud engine that we build, we make sure some of the first sets of audiences that went to FanServ are women’s sports audiences.”

Waldhorn feels these are audiences that purchase WNBA and NWSL merchandise and fans who buy from relatively niche sports like volleyball. “We were really strategic and intentional with creating a set of audiences,” said Waldhorn. “We found that some brands who want to get involved in women’s sports weren’t ready yet to just buy the data. They don’t have the infrastructure yet.”

Enter SIL, which can then turn that data into a programmatic audience and connect said data to SIL’s inventory. “Since the NewFront, we have seen a tremendous amount of inbound,” said Waldhorn. “The marketplace is selling; the audiences are selling. We weren’t invited to the RFP before. We weren’t part of the consideration set.”

For Waldhorn and others at SIL, upcoming media rights deals play a big role.

“Those media rights are getting gobbled up by Amazon and Apple,” said Waldhorn. “Everybody has to care right now, and it’s how the brands speak.”

SIL is playing close attention to emerging sports, like volleyball (particularly League One and Athletes Unlimited), youth sports and soccer. “The [FIFA] World Cup is right around the corner, there’s a lot of money that’s going to be spent,” said Waldhorn. “It’s going to drive increased and new interest in brands who want to tell stories and want to get involved in the World Cup, and want to use that as a catalyst for soccer.”

• MLB saw its best League Division Series audience since 2017, averaging 3.6 million viewers across Fox, FS1, TBS, TNT and truTV (and up 14% compared to 2023), reports SBJ's Austin Karp.

• Oregon’s 32-31 win over Ohio State drew 10.2 million viewers on NBC on Saturday night, marking the best Big Ten prime time football game since Penn State-Ohio State got 10.4 million on ABC in 2008, per fast-national data.

• With all the turmoil in the RSN market, my colleague Tom Friend has a handy listing of where each NBA team will show its local/regional games this season.

• Big Ten basketball TV schedules are out, and my Northwestern Wildcats have seven exclusive games on Peacock on the men's side (glad I set my parents up with Peacock Premium, so I don’t have to endure FaceTimes asking why they can’t find Ty Berry and Brooks Barnhizer). BTN also has the most women’s basketball games in network history, with more than 70 airing on the channel. BTN will also have a record 154 men’s games.

• Consider NFL Network's Rich Eisen bullish on an expanded package of NFL international games.

• TNT Sports is bringing back "Inside the NBA" producer Tim Kiely ahead of the season (he was previously with the company from 1995-2023). Kiely will now be VP and executive producer of NBA studio production.

• An array of locales and a new vibe around the "College GameDay" set with Nick Saban’s inclusion has things looking up for the ESPN pregame show, writes SBJ's Ben Portnoy.