ESPN Hits Ratings Home Run With Giants-Mets Wild Card Game Telecast

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ESPN’s coverage of the Oct. 5 San Francisco Giants-New York Mets National League Wild Card game drew a robust 7.7 million viewers across ESPN, ESPN Deportes and WatchESPN, the network said Thursday.

The audience for the game, won by the Giants 3-0 over the Mets to advance to play the Chicago Cubs in the NL Divisional playoff series, was down from last year's 7.8 million combined audience for ESPN's New York Yankees-Houston Astros AL Wild Card telecast, but still finished as the second most-watched MLB game on ESPN in 13 years, according to the network. 

The Giants-Mets game also delivered ESPN its largest streaming audience ever for an MLB event, setting records for total minutes streamed (35.9 million), unique viewers (634,400) and average minute audience (173,800 viewers), according to the network.

R. Thomas Umstead
R. Thomas Umstead

R. Thomas Umstead serves as senior content producer, programming for Multichannel News, Broadcasting + Cable and Next TV. During his more than 30-year career as a print and online journalist, Umstead has written articles on a variety of subjects ranging from TV technology, marketing and sports production to content distribution and development. He has provided expert commentary on television issues and trends for such TV, print, radio and streaming outlets as Fox News, CNBC, the Today show, USA Today, The New York Times and National Public Radio. Umstead has also filmed, produced and edited more than 100 original video interviews, profiles and news reports featuring key cable television executives as well as entertainers and celebrity personalities.