MLB All-Star Game gets Second-Lowest Television Ratings

July 11
(Bloomberg) — Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game drew its
second-lowest television rating since 1967 with numbers that still made
it the most-watched

U.S. sports event since the final round of golf’s Masters Tournament in April.

The American League’s 5-4 victory over the National League last night at

AT&T

Park in

San Francisco was watched in 8.4 percent of the 111.4 million

U.S. households with televisions, News Corp.’s Fox network said in a statement.

The

AL got home runs from

Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki,

Tampa

Bay’s Carl Crawford and

Cleveland’s Victor Martinez, then held off a ninth-inning rally by the NL to extend its unbeaten streak to 11 games.

The only All-Star Game to have a lower rating was the 2005 contest in

Detroit,
according to Nielsen Media Research figures dating back to 1967. Fox
said yesterday’s game matched the highest rating for any program on any
network since May 29.

The
rating for the final round of the Masters on April 8 was 9.1, when Zach
Johnson beat top-ranked Tiger Woods, Rory Sabbatini and Retief Goosen
by two strokes.

Including
the network’s pre-game show, Fox said it had the highest-rated night on
prime time since the finale of the network’s “American Idol” on May
23. Fox’s prime-time average rating of 7.9 beat out General Electric
Co.’s NBC (6.9), CBS Corp. (4.6) and Walt Disney Co.’s ABC (3.6).

The
baseball game easily topped the 6.2 rating of last month’s National
Basketball Association Finals. It also was the top-rated All-Star Game
in any of the major

U.S. professional sports this year, 83 percent higher than the 4.6 rating of the National Football League’s Pro Bowl.

Bloomberg