Monday night’s Home Run Derby audience jumped 5% from last year, with ESPN/ESPN2 drawing 5.72 million viewers for the win by Mariners C Cal Raleigh over Rays 3B Junior Caminero. That’s up from 5.45 million last year for Dodgers OF Teoscar Hernández’s win, but that event competed with the Republican National Convention (where Donald Trump announced his VP pick). Last year also did not benefit from full out-of-home data as this year’s did.
The Derby is down 6% from two years ago, when a win by Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drew 6.11 million. Monday night’s audience peaked at 6.31 million viewers at 9:30pm ET. The telecast also was the most-watched program of the day across all of broadcast and cable TV and in all key demos. ESPN for its traditional telecast averaged 5.23 million, while ESPN2’s “StatCast” version drew 499,000.
While the Derby is now unlikely to match tonight’s All-Star Game number on Fox, the Derby still outpaced the most recent NBA All-Star Game (4.72 million on TNT/truTV), Pro Bowl (4.7 million on ABC/ESPN/DisneyXD) and WNBA All-Star Game (a league-record 3.44 million on ABC last year).
