Mets topped Yankees in local TV ratings this season
The Mets drew 20 percent more fans to SNY than the Yankees did to YES
For the first time since SNY started competing against YES in 2006, the Mets topped the Yankees in local TV ratings, according to Bloomberg.
The Mets averaged 263,850 viewers per game on SNY, while the Yankees averaged 218,000 on YES.
Those numbers for the Mets were the highest since 2008.
One thing that hurt the Yankees’ ratings on YES, according to Bloomberg, was an ongoing dispute between YES and Comcast, which kept YES off the air in roughly 900,000 homes.
Although they lost three fifths of their “dream rotation” during the season, the boys from Flushing kept fighting and will host the Giants Wednesday night in the Wild Card game.
Meanwhile, the Yankees (wisely) sold off a bunch of pieces at the trade deadline and still made a late run for a postseason spot that came up a bit short.
For me, this comes down to two things.
First, despite losing tons of key players to injury, New York (NL) kept the interest of their fans for the entire season. That they were able to continue the momentum they started in 2015 — both in terms of their on-field product and television viewership — is tremendous.
Second, New York has always been a National League town. If you read stories from back in the 40s and 50s, it’s evident that the Dodgers and Giants had a special following before they left for California — a following that largely transferred to the Mets in 1962.
And even in the early-60s, when the Mets were horrible and the Yankees ruled baseball, the Mets still outdrew them attendance-wise a bunch of times.
It should also be mentioned that SNY has arguably the best broadcasters in the game — with play-by-play man Gary Cohen flanked by former players and color commentators Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling.
Even when the Mets aren’t entertaining (which is rare), the guys in the booth are.
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