Logo of the 2022 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, scheduled to be played in July 2022 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Viewership for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game set a record low for the third time in its last four editions but was the most-watched all-star game in sports for the seventh consecutive year it has been played, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen Tuesday.
Fox’s coverage of the American League’s 3-2 victory at Dodger Stadium last Tuesday averaged 7.507 million viewers, the most among prime-time non-news broadcast and cable programs airing between July 18 and Sunday.
The previous low was 8.162 million for the 2019 game. The 2021 game averaged 8.316 million viewers. There was no All-Star Game in 2020 because of the delayed start to the season caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Viewership figures are available dating back to 1972, except for the 1974 and 1981 games.
Official viewership for most forms of programming is down compared to the past primarily due to higher viewership of streaming programming, including the same programs shown on traditional television, as well as increased options for leisure time.
The record audience for the All-Star Game came in 1976, when an average of 36.33 million viewers watched ABC’s coverage in an era where there were three major broadcast networks and few other television alternatives.
The audience was the largest for any prime-time, non-news program since ABC’s coverage of the concluding game of the NBA Finals on June 16 averaged 13.993 million viewers. It was the largest audience for a Fox program since Jan. 30, when its coverage of the NFC championship game averaged 50.225 million, a 14-minute postgame show averaged 26.523 million and the cooking competition “Next Level Chef” that followed the postgame show averaged 8.105 million viewers.
The game drew its second-largest rating in the Los Angeles market, 8.0. St. Louis, where the telecast began two hours later local time when more potential viewers were home, was first with a 10.4 rating.
The week’s most-watched cable non-news program was ESPN’s coverage of the Home Run Derby from Dodger Stadium, which averaged 6.02 million viewers, fourth for the week behind the All-Star Game, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” which averaged 6.153 million, and an edition of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” with three previously broadcast segments that were updated for Sunday’s broadcast, which averaged 6.13 million viewers.
Viewership was down 4.3% from the 2021 derby, which averaged 6.293 million viewers, its largest audience since 2017, when it averaged 8.176 million.
Thursday’s prime-time hearing of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol averaged 17.667 million viewers across 10 networks. The other prime-time hearing, June 9, averaged 20.043 million across 11 networks.
MSNBC drew the largest audience for Thursday’s hearings, averaging 4.832 million viewers, fifth among the week’s prime-time programs.
ABC edged CBS, 2.75 million to 2.7 million, to be the most-watched network for the fifth time in the eight full weeks of television’s summer season.
