MLB Postseason Ratings: 15-Year High | 2023 Viewership

The 2025 Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason is the most-watched since 2010 as the American and National League Championship series continue.

Playoff games are averaging 4.33 million viewers, a 30 per cent increase on last year, with game five of the Seattle Mariners and the Detroit Tigers attracting 8.72 million – the most-watched American League Divisional Series (ALDS) matchup in 14 years.

The Toronto Blue Jays’ elimination of the New York Yankees at the same stage may have reduced some interest in the US’s largest media market moving forward, but the league can count on huge demand in Canada.

Average viewership for the two teams’ ALDS series was 7.65 million across both sides of the border on Fox and Sportsnet, with Canada accounting for 3.65 million of that audience.

The figures are indicative of a long-term trend, driven by rule changes that have sped up play and made the game more attractive to broadcasters, as well as the emergence of a new wave of exciting young players and strong performances from big market teams.

However, it is worth nothing that these ratings have been calculated using Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel analysis, which takes into account viewers on streaming services as well as the traditional panel – a shift which will almost certainly cause an uplift for most properties this year.

NHL opening night audiences up 37 per cent on ESPN

Average audiences for ESPN’s coverage of the opening night of the 2025/26 National Hockey League (NHL) season rose by 37 per cent year-on-year to 768,000.

The Disney-owned pay-TV broadcaster aired three games, with the clash between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Rangers attracting 1.09 million viewers, making it the second most-watched opening night fixture since 2023.

Both ESPN and the NHL will be delighted after a 39 per cent slump last year. But, again, it is worth emphasising that this is the first full season to be covered by Nielsen’s new method.

ESPN and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) share the US rights to the NHL as part of a combined US$4.4 billion seven-year deal which expires in 2028. As part of its deal ESPN airs selected matchups on ABC and has integrated the NHL’s domestic out-of-market direct-to-consumer (DTC) service into ESPN+.

• ---

  The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Finals averaged 1.5 million on ESPN and ABC, the second most-watched series since 2000and only marginally less than the 1.6 million who tuned in last year. Meanwhile, all four games averaged at least one million viewers, becoming the third WNBA Finals to do so after 1998 and 2024.

• The first 13 matches of the 2025 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup were watched by more than 60 million viewers globally, with India and Pakistan alone attracting 28.4 million. This makes it the most-watched women’s international cricket match of all time.
• WWE Raw is averaging 6.5 million viewing hours since debuting on Netflix in January. Netflix’s WWE content, which also includes Smackdown and premium live events outside the US, was a major factor in the platform achieving 300 million viewing hours during the first half of 2025.
• The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) delivered the most-watched broadcast in its history, averaging 2.07 million viewers and peaking at 3.63 million on Fox for the Texas FallNationals. The NHRA led all other motorsport series in the US for viewership, with Nascar averaging 1.7 million viewers for its Cup Series playoff race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on USA Network.

Get access to richer content, exclusive reports, unparalleled business intelligence, and community benefits to help you navigate the next frontier of sport and make more informed decisions with a SportsPro+ Premium membership. .