If You Build it, They Will Come: Field of Dreams Game Reportedly Pulls in Fox’s Highest Ratings for Regular Season Baseball in 16 Years
Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images
If you build it, they will come. And apparently, they will also watch. Major League Baseball’s Field of Dreams event has been highly touted as a massive success, and now they have the TV ratings to support it.
According to The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch, Thursday night’s national broadcast between the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees scored big with the TV audience.
“Based on overnight ratings per sources — final numbers out later — FOX is looking at its best metered market rating (the rating for the largest media markets/cities in the U.S.) for an MLB regular season game since 2005,” Deitsch tweeted.
Regarding last night’s Field of Dreams game:
Based on overnight ratings per sources — final numbers out later — FOX is looking at its best metered market rating (the rating for the largest media markets/cities in the U.S.) for an MLB regular season game since 2005.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) August 13, 2021
Programming Insider reports Fox averaged an estimated 5.07 million viewers and a 1.2 rating during the 8-11p ET block. For comparison, no League Championship Series game exceeded 5.04 million viewers last season. The 2021 All-Star Game averaged 8.2 million viewers.
Fox has been a national TV partner of Major League Baseball for the last quarter-century, broadcasting an exclusive slate of regular season matchups, the playoffs and World Series. The Field of Dreams ratings news should be a relief more than a surprise for both Fox and baseball. If they were unable to partner with Kevin Costner and sell fans on a unique matchup amid Iowa cornfields, it would be a huge detriment to the game’s ability to grow.
MLB is a very regionalized sport, rarely do games attract attention outside the markets of both participating teams, especially during the regular season. But the league did an excellent job of promoting their Field of Dreams event, a game that was announced almost exactly two years ago.
Thursday night was the first time MLB succeeded in making a regular season game feel like an event. It had the hype of an NFL game. The NFL is able to sell everything they do as a major event, from announcing their game schedule, to preseason matchups, all the way up to the Super Bowl.
For a sport starved for a younger audience to grow with the game, Major League Baseball just created what should turn into an annual event, and could become their most popular non-playoff game of the season.
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